Nokia announces updated Symbian Series 60 touch-screen software. Will it be the 'touch of death' for the iPhone?
In a clear attempt to 'catch-up' to the iPhone and focus on a 'touch' user interface Nokia has demonstrated its latest series 60 UI.
While details are still scant, a two-and-a-half minute video recorded at the Symbian Smartphone Show displays a lady flicking her finger and a stylus around on a device about the same size, and same dimensions as an iPhone.
As a recap, S60 software is built on the Symbian which is still the most popular smartphone OS on the market with a 53% market share (according to Canalys). Still, Nokia must be feeling the heat from the iPhone and HTC Touch, and is now racing to improve its own S60 interface by adding a strong 'touch' component to it.
One-upping the iPhone and Touch, the new S60 touch user interface comes with support for tactile feedback, which means that there is a physical pulse and feedback when the user taps on the screen.
Nokia believes this feedback will provide better awareness of the device's response and thus improve the user experience. Nokia has also added some other interesting features to the package like motion, orientation, proximity and light sensor technology. As an example of this motion technology, the lady in the video simply flips her phone around on the table to silence it.
 Screen shots from the Nokia presentation. Source: Engdaget |
According to Nokia, S60 will also be the first mobile software platform to deliver the complete Web video experience as Flash Video will be integrated with the Web Browser for S60. This allows people to view on the go Flash-enabled Web sites and Flash Video, such as YouTube. Nokia clearly think the hardware is good enough to handle Flash, even though Apple opted to build a stand-alone YouTube application, and drop Flash support all together.
Nokia also plans to make available new tools for developers to integrate touch into their own applications however existing 3rd party software should run without requiring a rewrite. Apple has been quick to react to Nokia's announcement, with the news that it will allow developers
to write third party apps to run directly on the iPhone .
Without testing the new S60 touch software it's hard to draw any firm conclusions about its usefulness. With an estimated ship date of next year stay tuned as the battle to bury the iPhone heats up.