Nokia Initially Planned A Bigger Display For Lumia 925, Dropped The Plan Due To Antenna Issues

In an interview to ZDNet, Jonne Harju, senior smartphone designer at Nokia has revealed that Nokia initially planned for a large display Nokia Lumia 925, but latter settled with the current size of 4.5 inch due to antenna issue. While speaking about the design process each product at Nokia goes in to before starting production, he told the Nokia Lumia 925 story.

Not all of the technologies that the designers want to include will eventually make it into a device, however. In the 925’s case, a bigger display was on the drawing board but was pulled after it was found to be monkeying with the all-important antenna.

“We were trying an idea where we were trying to fit a bigger display and in that point in time, we were thinking let’s make a bigger display… then we realised it did not help because of the antenna — there was interference,”

He even revealed that the metal rim around Nokia Lumia 925 gave few head aches during design process, but thanks to Nokia R&D team who solved the issues to make the device reach the consumer’s hands on time.

“We got some antenna results and it wasn’t working at all and we’d already decided we were going to produce this. Suddenly, it’s not working. To me it was superscary, I was like, ‘oh my, what are we going to do?’ That antenna problem can easily rip the whole concept apart.”

When kinks appear in the design process, the team can ask for help from the research and development staff.  “We go to R&D and it’s more of a therapy session — we say ‘man, we have issues’, then they start helping you out — ‘don’t worry, I think we can fix it this way’,” Alfthan says.

Getting the splits in the aluminium frame just so turned out to be in key to producing a functioning metal antenna.

“The grade of the plastic that we were using for that little split, it has a certain value that we needed to look at and make sure that it is communicated right in the antenna simulations. There’s a lot of minute things that, as a designer, you don’t really need to think about with a plastic phone because it’s RF-transparent by nature.”

Read the whole story from the link below. It’s definitely worth a read!

Source: ZDNET