Nokia
N90

The Nokia N90 was announced in April 2005 together with the N70 and N91. This trio of phones were the first N series branded products. In the press release associated with the launch, Nokia described the phones as “next-generation multimedia devices” which offered “the world’s most powerful functionality in the mobile space”. The company went on to state these premium devices as being “styled to meet the expectations of the most demanding customers” and that they featured “stainless steel finishes and black pearl and smooth silver colour pallets”. This Nokia PowerPoint slide from the time underlines the focus on delivering “high-performance multimedia” products. The N90 was the first Nokia phone with an auto-focus camera and it marked the start of Nokia’s collaboration with Carl Zeiss. The partnership helped Nokia deliver a two-megapixel camera for the first time, to take image quality to a new level. It also offered 20x digital zoom. Discussions between Nokia and Carl Zeiss started in 2004 when the Zeiss team approached Nokia about the idea of using Zeiss optics for its mobile phone cameras and the two companies quickly concluded it would be a sensible idea. A commercial agreement was signed within three months. Getting the Zeiss optics into the N90 was extremely challenging as Nokia had already started work on the N90. Furthermore, despite a long history of making camera lenses, Zeiss was only used to making small quantities on lenses in the hundreds, or sometimes in the thousands. A partnership with Nokia meant scaling up to produce millions of lenses. The unique “Twist and Shoot” design of the N90 was an innovative step by Nokia with strong similarities to handheld video cameras at the time. When the phone was launched, Nokia stated that it was “targeted at high-technology enthusiasts who value the ultimate in connected mobile photography.” Nokia described the phone as having “two ergonomic modes for instant photo and video capture.” Users could twist the rotating camera barrel and the two-megapixel camera was automatically ready to capture high-quality photos via a dedicated capture key and the 65k colour cover display. The phone could also be unfolded and twisted making it easy to capture video content in MP4 format using the 262,144 colour landscape display as a viewfinder. When used in this mode users could access dedicated record and zoom keys, making one-hand operation much easier. A Nokia promotional image included in the launch materials is shown below.