In 1997, Nokia designed a children’s phone shaped like Winnie the Pooh. About 12 years later, the company dreamed up a phone that could stretch your wrist and change its appearance even further. These concepts never made it into people’s hands, but they are now available for your viewing pleasure at the Nokia Design Archive.

Launching today, the Nokia Design Archive developed by Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. The online portal hosts about 700 exhibits. The full scope of the archive, however, amounts to 20,000 exhibits, so what is available now on the website is “the tip of the iceberg,” said Anna Valtonen, lead researcher at the Nokia Design Archive. Valtonen previously spent 12 years at Nokia, including holding a position as head of design and vision research.

Most of the exhibits date from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, when electronics became smaller and smaller, and the internet made mobile computing technology possible. This new era of interpersonal communication began with a decade of wild experimentation at Nokia, where designers were encouraged to think about how this new technology could fit into people’s lives depending on their age group. , interest, and culture. “If you were a teenager on the American East Coast, what would you want? Or if you are a grandmother in India, what is important to you? Valtonen said.

The archive contextualizes crowd favorites such as “The Brick,” or “banana phone” by Neo as seen in The Matrixor even the Nokia 5110where the game is Snake first appeared. It also shows interesting concepts that have been forgotten or remained unseen until now.

Here are some highlights from the collection.