Former Nokia and Vertu designer working on ‘beautiful’ smartwatch

Frank Nuovo, the pioneering Nokia industrial designer that founded luxury phone brand Vertu, is working on a smartwatch. Quartz reports that MetaWatch will release the product in the first quarter of next year; it’ll feature upgrades to the display and operating system seen on earlier watches from the company.

Frank Nuovo was the Jony Ive of Nokia. Or, more accurately, Jony Ive, Apple’s legendary design guru, is the Frank Nuovo of Apple. Long before Ive turned his attention to mobile devices, Nuovo designed phones for Nokia that were iconic in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s possible that when Nokia’s marketshare peaked in 2008, one in three phones purchased that year were designed by Nuovo.