Some interesting "Did you know..." facts about Nokia

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Nokia is a company with history, there's no denying that. The company has led the way in mobile communication for years, but lost the ball for a while with the rise of the smartphone. Moving across to Windows Phone, Nokia is rejuvenating the brand and developing new technologies to regain its lead in the market it helped develop.

Windows Phone Central forum member socialcarpet has published a number of facts and trivia about the company in our forum. Starting a thread, the following was provided as the opening post:

  • The Lumia name is derived from the partitive plural form of the word Lumi which means snow in the Finnish language.
  • Nokia is by far the oldest company in the smartphone realm. The company was founded in 1865. It began as a paper mill near the town of Nokia in Finland. In the latter half of the 19th century, it moved into producing rubber. In the 1900's it began producing telegraph and telephone cables.
  • Nokia has made a dizzying array of products over the years. Some of them include snow tires, rubber boots, gas masks, television sets, geiger counters, laptop computers, network components and even hydroelectric power.
  • Nokia developed Finland's first mobile phone network, making Finland the first country in the world to have full mobile phone coverage for private citizens, this began in 1971 and by 1978 Finland had 100% coverage. Imagine that. If you were living in Finland in the 1970s, you could have a car phone that would work anywhere in the country!

As well as the above facts, socialcarpet went on to note some instances or advancements where Nokia was first. It's an interesting read, especially if you're not into trivia. Nokia has a number of hidden gems that make it one of the companies that helped build the foundations of the mobile phone as we know it today.

Do you know some facts about Nokia? You can check out more and add your own in the "Interesting Nokia Facts" thread over on our community forum.

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds

Rich Edmonds is Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him over on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.
54 Comments
  • mobile phone coverage in 1970. 0.o
    That's crazy.
  • With phones the size of a small car. ;)
  • Not bad.  I'm always less impressed when I read about these things happening in a European country though.  They're all so small in comparison.  It's the same as having coverage over 1-2 States in the US.
  • I'm sorry to be rude but this is a very short-sighted comment...
  • Why short sighted?
  • Because AfroPhysics isn't considering the breakthrough, but merely trivial stuff like the coverage area... Like I said below; why didn't even one state in the US have full mobile phone coverage in the 1970s if it was so easy? No more questions.
  • I'm not saying it wasn't an accomplishment, just that one should consider the scale. Plus, I'm pretty sure the US was busy walking on the moon around that time, so I can understand the lack of celluar technology accomplishments.
  • We weren't walking on the moon in the 70's. Plus, which industry ended up being used by more people around the world and ended up being the more profitable one? -an American.
  • Actuall there were moon missions in the 70's.
  • What an stupid comment -_-
  • Yeah, but I can roam on VodaFone all over Europe. You guys can barely go from one state to the next :)
    CDMA, yuk :)
  • So why did you guys not have even one state with full mobile phone coverage in the 1970s? That's right, it has nothing to do with the size of the country. It's about covering one entire particular area at a time when most other people were still awing radio broadcasts. So, to conclude, you are indeed VERY short-sighted, as already mentioned.
  • I think it was the ARP network,used mostly by contractors and loggers in remote locations. The device itself was usually fixed in to the vehicle. I remember that you had to call to the operator who then relayed the call.
    Autoradiopuhelin
    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoradiopuhelin
  • In Venezuela we didn't even have land lines in 1970.
  • yeah, but your chicks are really hot. Congratulations.
  • Isn't that when Hugo took office?
  • I think I'm starting to like Nokia as much as my Football team . . . and that's saying something, lol.
  • i hear you brother preach! lol me too
  • Wazaap hows it going any new nok products :D
  • That's some impressive history.
  • Gotta get me some Nokia rubber boots!
  • Nokian tyres are very good. I would recommend them for their winter tyres.
  • Will the Nokia tyres get the new notificaiton centre?
  • Yesse.
  • I speak some Finnish, and I believe "Lumia" is the singular partitive form of "snow", not the plural. The plural partitive would be"Lumeja" (pronounced Loo-may-yah) which translates to "snows". Just sayin' ;-).
  • True dat! Lumia is like: some snow. Hard word even for us Finns!
  • Väärä! Sorry, but "lumia" = snows, and "lumeja" doesn't make sense. Hard language indeed, though!
  • I speak some Finnish too, and...
    No. "lumia" is in fact partitive plural.
    Partitive singular is "lunta" or "lumea", and there's no such thing as "lumeja" (at least not outside of slang).
  • Nokia also has huge array and BY FAR the most important and largest patent portfolio in the industry. They are the 5th largest spender on R&D flobally of the past 15 years. They still use 4 times to R&D than Apple. 
    Just to put it in scale Nokia owns 65% of essential GSM patents, patents that you will need to make call, receive one or move data packages. On LTE Nokia owns 47% of essential patents. Nokia was also part of the 6 companies that made WiFI a standard and owns many of essential patents there as well. 
    Nokia also invented ceramic antenna for phone. That was when every other manufacturer had antennas sticking outside of the phone and Nokia had it integrated into the phone. 
  • ^This!  Amazing how 'some' still question what Nokia brings to the industry, especially to WP and Microsoft. 
     
    Nokia is a VERY innovative company and I think we are seeing just the surface of what this company has to offer everyone.
  • that's why I love nokia, one of the most innovative companies ever
  • Hm.. I think the Ericsson T68 was the first cell with an integrated antenna.
  • Ohohohoh, hell no! My Nokia 3210 (1999) even had integrated antenna before T68 (2001), and that wasn't even the first phone with an integrated one (the first came out in 1997, by someone else).
  • We had several Nokia tv's back in the 80's in the uk
  • At my work there's a Nokia disposable paper toilet seat dispenser!
  • pictures or it didnt happen
  • Since Elop took over it dispenses Androids :D
  • Well they're cheap enough after all
  • Interesting - I've never heard about some of these thinks!
  • "It's an interesting read, especially if you're NOT into trivia." Am I reading that wrong in my head?
  • My collegue is using almost 10 year old Nokia GPS device. It has 3d maps and lane assistance from that time and is buttery smooth. Interface is still better than many costly GPS in the market. Impressive :)
  • In the HBO show OZ, the computer monitors in the prison are all NOKIA.
  • We need to have a trivia podcast. Rich leads. 
  • In the HBO series 'Hung', Ray uses an N85 throughout. Seriously... We could crash the WPC server listing all the spots in TV/Film where Nokia makes an appearance. =P
  • WPCentral...you are confusing me...
    Like ‘Lumia’, a term that was coined by 20th Century Artist Thomas Wilfred to refer to art created from light, Nokia appears to be centering on terms that involve the same theme: light.
    Yet...
    The Lumia name is derived from the partitive plural form of the word Lumi which means snow in the Finnish language.
  • better, did you know that 'Lumia' translates as prostitute in spanish?, i wonder why Nokia didn't checked that out before choosing that name :D
  • LOL! I do work with some Finnish guys and we had a real laugh when translated to them... Sure if they knew beforehand they may have gone for another word... But then it may have meant something even worse in another language...
    Still, I don't mind the meaning if the phone rocks.
  • I have never heard anyone in Spain say the word lumia, now the word lumi yes that is slang but hardly anyone speaks of it. Ramera means prostitute. 
  • I got a snow phone :-o
  • Lolll
  • When it comes to Nokia products, it's not the actual product you need to worry about should you "damage" it. It's what it was on when it was "damaged".
  • I speak Finnish so knowing lumia meant snow was no mystery to me love the nokia's best phone brand ever XD !
  • it's weird seeing all this wonder from americans. bassically all this stuff is common knowdledge in europe nad even asia. guess  this was one of the negatives about nokia not being active in the u.s that much in the last 10 years. they went unnoticed. if people knew more about what nokia did even in the last years and all their innovations , apple would be just a joke. ffs they revealed a glorified featurephone with a touchscreen in 2007 and called it the world's first real smartphone, and the media just took it and ran with it. now people think apple invented the smartphone and that it's the most innovative company in the world.
  • I remember my "Bag Phone" I had in my car in the States. State of the Art cellular technology in 1993!