October 16th, 2007
S60 touch technology announced, watch out Apple
I saw a sign at the S60 Summit that listed S60 touch interface as an upcoming feature. I think the introduction of the iPhone really pushed manufacturers to speed up development of technology they had under wraps and today Nokia officially announced the S60 touch user interface would be coming in 2008. Rafe has a YouTube video of the presentation at the Symbian Smartphone Show over at All About Symbian that has me personally very excited about 2008. Imagine something like the iPhone, but with more functionality and an open architecture for virtually unlimited customization and expansion to your needs and desires.
The S60 touch interface supports both finger touching and stylus navigation and also provides tactile feedback with the touch interface. This means there will be a physical pulse/vibration when you tap on the display that should help with the user experience. The touch interface technology also supports motion and orientation sensors. The new S60 browser will support Flash Video and bring you a true desktop browsing experience on a mobile device.
Even more compelling is that all existing S60 3rd Edition applications will run on touch enabled devices with no modification required. Developers are certainly encouraged to optimize their applications for touch, but are not required to do anything if they do not desire to. This technology will be available to all manufacturers in 2008 and I personally can’t wait to pick up a S60 touch device and will add my iPhone to my mobile device archives.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 10/16/07
