Nokia Lauta was ready to be announced N9 successor

Some 15 years ago the smartphone world was completely different than it is today. It was dominated by Nokia, but other brands were doing their best to compete with the Finnish giant. But, there wasn’t much they could do since Nokia ruled the world with over 50% of smartphones running their Symbian OS. Nokia was so secure in its place that the company experimented with a lot of different forms of digital companion gadgets and shapes of smartphones.

Dimitrios Vlachos again posted some new photos of forgotten Nokia prototype devices, and there are two that were rather interesting. Nokia Booklet or eReader in gorgeous Cyan is definitely one of them. eReaders are quite a popular category of digital devices even today since they can replace dozen of books or other PDF documents one wants to read during vacations. There isn’t much info about this particular device, mostly because it probably never got close to the production line. However, a nice e-Reader would be a nice addition to the Nokia portfolio even today.

There was the Nokia Pine, or the reader that Nokia was developing and based on Linux. However, this was the first product that newly placed CEO Stephen Elop cancelled.

Another device that caught my eye was Nokia Lauta. The device looks like Nokia E7 and might be nothing special to many, but Nokia Lauta should have been a successor of the Nokia N9 in case MeeGo had a brighter future. I’m still sad that MeeGo never got a chance to become a shining bright star. I am happy that Nokia N9 got out because there are many nice Nokia devices that got buried prior to the announcement. Just check the Meltemi project and phones like Clipr or Kataya.

MyNokiaBlog (what a biggie of the Nokia world was this blog!) got their hands on Nokia Lauta (RM-742) back in 2012, and I must say that this device with a hardware keyboard would be a nice succession to the N9. Actually, this device resurfaced back in 2017 which we covered here. An interesting fact is that Nokia Lauta was supposed to be launched in Q4 2011, but we know the history. The invested hours and heartbeats were wasted for nothing. Such a shame.

Thanks to Dimitrios for bringing the joyful memories back!

 

Check Dimitrios Twitter for more Nokia proto devices!