Nokia Launches S60 Touch Interface

[bavlondon]

http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1160272

S60 smartphone software evolves to enrich the user experience
October 16, 2007

Expanding the platform with intuitive touch user interface, sensor technologies and complete web video experience

Symbian Smartphone Show, London, UK - As Internet is entering into the core of mobile experiences, Nokia continues to implement new innovations for S60 on Symbian OS(TM), the market leading smartphone software, to develop the best possible mobile experiences for people.

S60 will introduce new features that enhance the user experience and enable manufacturers, developers and operators to design new types of mobile devices, applications and services.


Full story in link

-haptic feedback support
-full support for existing S60 apps (wow, that's really cool!)
-support for kinetic and light sensors (with Symbian 9.5 I guess, as it already supports that)
-a new toolkit for creating animated, modern UI's
-full Flash support

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Should be interesting to see what they come up with but I hope that they also include multitouch/gesture like functions.

[bavlondon]

Here are some pics

http://www.gsmhelpdesk.nl/img/news/main/1353.jpg

http://www.gsmhelpdesk.nl/img/news/main/1356.jpg

http://www.gsmhelpdesk.nl/img/news/main/1356.jpg

http://www.gsmhelpdesk.nl/img/news/main/1355.jpg

http://www.gsmhelpdesk.nl/img/news/main/1357.jpg

[drwalker]

I only had two criticisms of the vid, the first was that it showed little of the device in action compared to the overall running time, and the second, main bugbear is the scrollbar. After seeing footage of people flipping through items on the iphone with relative ease, this looks slower and easier with a stylus. Still excited, particularly liked the flipping of the phone to silence an alarm. Looks nice enough, but the iPhone fans will accuse Nokia of plagiarism if it looks like that, despite the fact that there is very little that can be done with a device of this nature - to make it look individual would add bulk, or reduce screen size, neither of which is desirable in this case.

[bavlondon]

As if that wasnt enough look what else they have in store for us.

http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/4952/1/

[drwalker]

There seems to be plenty of talk on this about prettying it all up, which is all well and good, but two key factors:
Battery life
Memory
At this rate, Symbian could end up like Vista, and we'll need 256 mb just to switch the phone on...

http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2007/10/16/nokia-drops-news-bombs-touchscreen-phones-in-08-and-a-rumored-n810-due-in-a-week

Article mentions concerns over the possibilities for a full keyboard - to be honest, I don't regard this as an issue. A touchscreen qwerty will suffice for many, and the wireless keyboard software built into current S60 devices will most likely still be incorporated into a Nokia touchscreen phone anyway (or downloadable - all programs are supposed to work after all).

[drwalker]

http://www.intomobile.com/2007/10/17/picture-concept-s60-touch-devices.html

To the person that took this picture, thank you. To my mobile insurance broker, no, I did not drop my phone down the toilet, I just happen to keep it in my shirt pocket, with a small lead weight tied to it as a fashion thing.

[Orson]

...so, the S60 Touch eh?.... it reminds me of something, ...

....nah, can't remember what....

[bavlondon]

There seems to be plenty of talk on this about prettying it all up, which is all well and good, but two key factors:
Battery life
Memory
At this rate, Symbian could end up like Vista, and we'll need 256 mb just to switch the phone on...

http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2007/10/16/nokia-drops-news-bombs-touchscreen-phones-in-08-and-a-rumored-n810-due-in-a-week

Article mentions concerns over the possibilities for a full keyboard - to be honest, I don't regard this as an issue. A touchscreen qwerty will suffice for many, and the wireless keyboard software built into current S60 devices will most likely still be incorporated into a Nokia touchscreen phone anyway (or downloadable - all programs are supposed to work after all).

Im sure the battery issue will be solved. If Apple managed to do it with the iphone then there is no reason why Nokia cant.

[drwalker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeDrive

This is the problem with designing these things - there's only so much that you can do in terms of style if you want to keep it size efficient, but that doesn't change things I know.
Then again, I might be concerned that Nokia's effort will be lost amidst the 'clone' accusations to the point where they consider not bothering, or even worse, start slapping slide out keypads on it when they are not needed. Want to see how not to make a touchscreen phone? Check out the W950, with what I consider the most ill thought out design in recent times. We're all looking at Nokia and Apple thinking that they will be fighting it out, but in the meantime, Sony's efforts in this particular arena seem to be getting lost in the ever present smoke and mirrors.
http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/showthread.php?t=67716
Have to say on the lookalike front though...