Mobile phones as life-changing tools

MANILA, Philippines - Almost all, one time or another, have used a Nokia phone. This is a mobile world truth that history can very well attest to.

Remember the then funky yellow Nokia 5110 phone that literally brightened up what used to be a staid, all-black world of cellular phones?

This year, the group that started off the mobile phone revolution is celebrating its 25th year of successful and steadfast innovation.

People owe their unforgettable mobile experiences to the Nokia Research Center (NRC), Nokia’s corporate research arm which explores new frontiers of mobility and solves scientific challenges.

From its beginning in 1986 in Helsinki, the NRC has introduced some of the fundamental advances which people may have taken for granted today — from the first handheld mobile phone (Mobira Cityman, 1987) to internal mobile antennas (Nokia 8810, 1998) to the first device to access Wi-Fi Internet (Nokia N95, 2007).

Over the last 25 years, the center helped Nokia to make market-changing innovations. Some of these are the first digital GSM call (1991), the first commercial SMS services (1993), the browser technology that brought the Web to our mobiles (1997), the first 3G call (2001), and HD quality calling (2009).

Now, the NRC has 12 labs across four different continents, creating valuable innovations by understanding the wide variety of cultures, environments and skill-sets of these diverse geographies.

Its current areas of research focused on technology include changing the way people interact with their surroundings and how people communicate with one another, meeting the challenges and opportunities of developing countries, and producing types of mobile devices completely unrecognizable from those people use today.

With the NRC’s unwavering commitment of driving innovation, people can expect great changes on the way they interact with the world around them for years to come.