Event Coverage

Putting Nokia to the Test at the Nokia China Campus

By Seow Tein Hee - 7 Jul 2009

Nokia Design Studio and Factory

Nokia Design Studio

Designing a phone isn't easy. And this is where the creative minds gather together, in a bid to create a phone that's pleasing to the eye, and easy on the hands. Various design studios come into play, with offices placed strategically in Nokia's home ground, Finland, and across the oceans via its Los Angeles and Beijing studios. As part of the Nokia China Campus, the Nokia Design Studio in Beijing is a hotbed of ideas. Focusing on devices aimed at the entry level market, the Beijing Nokia Design Studio has seen a few great ideas come to fruition over the years it has been running.

Manned by a team of 25 designers, the Beijing Nokia Design Studio is further divided into separate teams, each specializing in a specific area that requires an aesthetic eye to it. This includes Packaging (box designs) and Color Materials (the aesthetic color and layout of your device) just to name a few. Some of the cooler stuff we've seen in the Design Studio includes a machine that is able to produce a prototype dummy unit based on the 3D models as laid out by the designers. In a short matter of an hour, the dummy unit, made of wax and plastic, allows the designers to further analyze an actual unit and the possible feel of the device.

As expected of a creative-centric area, we were greeted with a chic feel as we entered the Beijing Nokia Design Studio.

Besides the various offices across the globe, each Design Studio is further sub-divided into specialized teams that handle a specific design aspect that will all come together in the final production unit.

Doodling on the wall is highly recommended! Yes, really, Nokia designers utilize the acrylic walls here to display their thoughts and creative ideas for further brainstorming sessions. But then, all we managed to see, are some very pretty drawings from the talented designers, given that the Design Studio does hold some pretty confidential stuff that's not for the public eye.

Nokia Factory

Ending off our tour, we made a visit to the Nokia Factory, located within the Xing Wang Industrial Park which is one of the world's largest mobile phone industry chains. The Xing Wang Industrial Park also houses Nokia's various partners in manufacturing, which includes its battery provider, Sanyo Energy (Beijing) Co., Ltd, RF Micro Devices for its RF chips, Ibiden Electronics (Beijing) Co., Ltd for its printed circuit boards, and many more. The significance of having its partners within close proximity becomes apparent with the reduction in transportation and shipping costs when it comes to material provision from its partners. Furthermore, with the alignment of these closely knit industries, an e-commerce system is also established. This creates a fast and efficient order system, wherein major orders from countries around the world can be fulfilled as fast as within a day. As one of the key manufacturing hubs, the Beijing site is instrumental in the production of top-end Nokia devices, which includes the recently launched Nokia N97.

Even the smallest detail matters in the busy production line found within the Beijing Nokia factory.

As automated as the factory is, the production line is still maintained by human control to ensure quality and prevent obvious faults from reaching the production batch.

As you might have surmised by now, to produce a mobile device requires a whole lot of work and preparation. Beginning with the basic design, to the stringent tests and logistics involved to ship these final production units across the world, it goes to show that the Finnish company has taken a variety of steps to ensure it keeps its market share in the near future. With that, we end our short but fruitful tour of the Nokia China Campus. In our upcoming August issue of HWM, we'll also delve into the minds of the Nokia designers, and give you an insight of their thought process, and some possible developments in the near future.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.