Why Aren’t Mobile Phones Smaller?

Doesn’t Nokia 8810 phone and its metal cover bring great memories from the 90s? At that time,  people got to witness the mobile phone wars with two Nordic technology enterprises, the Finnish Nokia and the Swedish Ericsson. That time resembles much of what is happening now between Apple and Samsung, the phones were just different.

 Michael Douglas with a ‘log’ in the movie Wall Street.

The first mobile phone came out in 1973 when Motorola released its 1.1 kilogram ‘log’ that took 10 hours to charge and that could be used only 30 minutes. On 1989 Motorola released the first commercial phone Motorola DynaTAC 8000X that was like its predecessor and its insane price was 4000 US dollars.

From 1989 until the early 2000s Nokia designed the world’s best mobile phones whose prices  were feasible for average consumers. Nokia gained much popularity trough movies as its 8110 ‘banana phone’ was viewed in the sci-fi movie called Matrix.

Since the early days, mobile phones were really big and thereby Nokia also tried to design smaller and smaller phones. In the 90s it was fashion to own a small phone, smaller than anyone else had, or they were picked at school. Since the rise of smart phones, phones have grown bigger again. If there weren’t any tablets today, smart phones could grow to those measures. Even now the boundary between tablets and phablets seems to be really narrow.

But what was it that prevented Nokia and other manufacturers from designing even smaller phones? Technology does not set boundaries as components can be designed to be basically as small as people want. The main reason was the distance between mouth and ear. Smaller phones would not have been ergonomic enough. That simple!

Nokia 7650 was the first Nokia phone to have a built-in camera. It was also viewed in Tom Cruise‘s movie The Minority Report.

Like back in the days, today there is a lot of metal inside phones. Metals such as copper, aluminum and galvanized steel are used in phones such as the iPhone 6. Those metals can be purchased from Shanghai Metal Corporation. In order to learn more, please visit our website. Please also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Nokia, Youtube, Web Designer Depot, Know Your Mobile, Comunidad Movistar, Parade

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Better Education Obtained in Container Schools

Today shipping containers are used to build apartments, hotels, stores and saunas to name but a few. But why does it make sense to build schools out of containers?

The first reason is that especially old wooden school buildings are likely to have mold issues that may cause severe health risks. For example an article of a Finnish science magazine Tiede states that every second school in Finland has mold issues (source). Students are therefore either forced to stay in their mold school or move to another school. Container schools could be installed in relatively short time and with relatively low costs.

The second reason can be studied from Samsung. In 2012, the South Korean electronics chaebol established a shipping container school in the South African village of Phomolong as a part of its corporate-social responsibility program. The school offers its 21 students premium education facilities with solar powered electricity system and notebooks, an Internet connection and Samsung Galaxy tablets. (source)

In Orange County California, creative architects had an over three months projects of expanding the Waldorf School in Costa Mesa by using shipping containers. It took 99 days to build four buildings out of 32 shipping containers. The eco-friendly construction project cost two million US dollars which was estimated of being 10-20 percent cheaper than an “old-school” building project. Also it would have most likely taken more time than 99 days to finish by using other material than shipping containers.

There are many types of internationally standardized shipping containers. Some have an open top and some can be opened from the sides. Thereby it gives designers limitless opportunities to develop mobile education facilities. In order to solve mold related problems or take education to less developed areas, governments, nonprofit organizations and companies’ CSR managers should look for containerized education solutions.

Shanghai Metal Corporation is a proud provider of shipping containers. Our wide variety of container products can be seen in our website http://www.smccontainer.com. We hope that you also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also try our new mobile application by scanning the QR code below.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Tiede magazine, Cnet, The Volt Report, Arch Daily, Wintech Modular Buildings, Lion Containers, Design Boom