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Nokia set to demo S60 Touch UI at Mobile World Congress 2008

By: , IntoMobile
Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 5:30 PM

We’ve seen some simple demonstrations of Nokia’s S60 Touch interface before, but Nokia’s going to really kick things up into high gear with their full-on S60 Touch demo at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona (MWC). According to the official Symbian Series 60 blog, Nokia will be showing off some added Touch UI features at the expo next month.

We can’t wait to see how development of the S60 Touch UI is going, especially with features like vibration (haptic) feedback. And, there’s a new development toolkit for S60, the UI Accelerator Toolkit, that will allow Nokia and third-party developers to make use of dazzling visual features. The Finnish company will also be demonstrating the S60 UI’s much-improved web-browsing experience, which makes use of Adobe’s Flash Lite technology.

Nokia and S60 Touch

We gotta assume that the enhancements in the S60 interface will make its way to the Touch UI, and with the benefit of Adobe’s Flash Lite plug-in, web-browsing in S60 Touch should surpass the iPhone’s  web-browsing experience – we’re talking about Flash-animations, embedded videos, the whole shebang. If Nokia’s Touch UI is as good as the hype, Apple engineers will be working some late nights to make sure the second-gen iPhone shines.

Nokia hasn’t announced any new devices, per se, at MWC, but they will be showcasing the “latest S60 devices.” We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of fancy new features those crazy Finns are going to drop on us in a couple weeks.

[Via: blogs.S60]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • newtype2011

    I seriously can’t wait to see what Nokia pulls out of their hat. Any phone announcements will just be the cherry on top considering what they already have in the works to announce…

    …patiently waiting -

  • Andrew

    Unless Nokia make that screen bigger I don’t think we’ll have a great web browser. It’s too thin by the looks of things. I always thought the iPhone was too big but it’s quite good actually since it’s not really that thin and the rounded edges make it slip in and out of your pocket without difficulty.

    Personally I still want a candybar format, no moving stuff and as few buttons as possible. Maybe some on the side though for music controls unless they do a good job of this ‘tapping the side to change song, etc’ stuff.

    And some more colour schemes, I hate turquoise.

    And tidy up the UI, there’s just too much clutter on every screen.

  • JonnyBruha

    @Andrew, that’s the beauty of S60. The menu can be a disgusting mess when you turn the phone on for the first time, but you have the freedom to clean it and organize it however you want. :)

    @Will, did you cover this article for me? My faith in you as an editor has been restored. I’ll try to go easier on your iPhone posts. ;)

  • Andrew

    @Jonny

    Maybe I just don’t appreciate it because I’m still on an N93 and this thing clunks around so slowly but I still think they’re too cluttered? To what extent can you really clean up the active standby screen? All I can really do on this is choose which apps I have shortcuts to.

    Since we’re gonna have touch-screen flexibility I’d love to see something along the lines of the iGoogle homepage, with gadgets and stuff that we can shift around on a nice BIG screen. RSS feeds on the homepage would be cool while still room to have calendar events and stuff. If the phones UI’s fast enough then it’s not so necessary to have applications on the first page, just in a menu like they already are or something.

    But like I said, totally flexible. I’d like to even be able to remove the battery indicator and such if I really wanted to.

  • Will Park

    We’ll see what the Touch UI looks like next month. Ooops. I mean this month! :grin:

    Jonny:
    We’re all entitled to our opinions. I love the iPhone but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate other offerings. That being said, thanks for going easy on me :wink: