The first post I wrote on this blog, in April this year, was on the arts and technology consultancy Proboscis and their Snout collaboration, designed to help communities develop “environmental authoring” tools to monitor their local environments. Now Nokia has trialed a phone which would do some of the same things, including some environment monitoring, along with health and weather – albeit only a concept at this stage.

I’ve skipped uploading a picture because the phone itself looks much like most other Nokias, but with green tinges to the illustration (literally). Unlike most other Nokia, it would come with a separate wearable sensing device for wrist or neck strap – next to the ID card, perhaps – which would track the environment.

On the tracking Nokia imagines that the phone will let users monitor (for example) ground level carbon monoxide, particulates, and UV radiation. On the health aspect, heart rate or noise level. The comms is done through NFC, and they say good things about reduce, reuse, recycle, and about reducing the (resource) impact of the phone, in terms of both materials and energy.

By publishing the concept at this stage Nokia hopes to promote a discussion with the industry about greater sustainability – and with interested customers, although there’s no obvious way for an individual to respond.

From the description of the possible functions, it sounds as if the eventual market might turn out to be the ‘worried well’, not to say over-anxious over-achievers. A suspicion strengthened by the proposed option under the weather monitoring for “subscription to environmental catastrophe warning and guidance system”.

Thanks to Core 77.