Frank Nuovo in Mumbai. A Telegraph picture

Mumbai, Aug. 28: From a designer of a zero-gravity chair for astronauts as part of a NASA-funded student project to the conceptualiser of the ubiquitous candybar mobile phone, Frank Nuovo has come a long way. He still wears his designer hat — perhaps a little more rakishly today — as the man behind super luxury mobile phone brand Vertu.

But the champion of the candybar phone remains unshaken by the verve and the sex appeal of the clamshell — the flip phone that folds into a nifty little thingummy and mirrors the elegance of the mollusc.

“I go for something that is robust, efficient and beautifully designed — and the candybar meets all of those requirements,” says Nuovo, who’s on his first trip to Mumbai. “People who have gone on to use clamshell phones have come back to candybar phones.”

Nuovo’s views still permeate the Nokia portfolio — after all he was the chief designer at the world’s largest mobile handset maker before he chose to move on to grander things and concentrate on Vertu, the luxury brand supported by Nokia. Nokia had set its face against the clamshell for a very long time even though the Motorolas, the Samsungs and a couple of Chinese handset makers like Bird made a neat little pile of cash with the clamshell phones. Nokia’s first flip phones — the 6170 and the 6260 — came out only in 2004 and they tip-toed into the market silently, probably afraid to attract the faint wrinkle of disgust that creases Nuovo’s face when I broach the issue.

Nuovo, who stepped down as chief designer at Nokia in April after a 11-year stint, was forced to cast aside his design sensibilities and allow the flip phones to come through after Nokia’s handset sales dipped alarmingly in late 2003. But at Vertu it’s seems pretty much clear that he won’t allow the damn clamshell in if he can help it.

Vertu comes in three ranges — Ascent, Signature and Constellation — and they all sport the candybar shape. The Vertu mobile phone range offers seductive objets d’ art featuring premium quality leather, polished keys and soft backlighting that are almost outrageously priced starting from about Rs 2.5 lakh and going all the way up to Rs 54 lakh. They are touted as aspirational objects of desire designed to signal that you have arrived in life and inspire envy among the people around you.

The phone maker made a discreet, low-key launch in India about two years ago and it claims to be pleasantly surprised by the sharp surge in sales in the country. “They are flying off the shop shelves,” says Chris Harris, Vertu’s global marketing head. “We can’t keep pace with the demand.”

Pitched at over-achieving chief executives, celebrities and top-dollar professionals, these phones use materials that you won’t normally see in mobile phones: titanium, zirconium, platinum, gold, silver, surgical grade stainless steel, rubies and dashes of premium leather sourced from cowhide that comes from Spain. But the material that Nuovo is really kicked about is polished ceramic which lends a chic look to the keypads on Vertu phones.

“Nobody’s used it till now. I love working with new materials. I have two material scientists in my design team back in southern California and we look at a lot of noveau stuff that we can use to stay ahead of the pack,” says Nuovo.

The ceramic is micro-perforated with a laser device and the back daubed with a special resin that lends a beautiful backlighting effect when the keypad is pressed.

At 18, Nuovo was like any other kid in southern California — schmoozing around and playing gigs with a jazz band in which he was the drummer. Nokia made Nuovo truly world famous: but at 45 he is starting to hare off in other directions. He has handed over the onerous job of designing the Nokia phones to others, and decided to focus on Vertu. “I just decided to get on to a speedboat and have some fun,” says Nuovo who has earned the moniker Mr. Mobile and won a forest of design awards.