Well, if it’s good enough for Batman, it’s surely ready for the likes of us.
According to Mobile Royale (”An Asian perspective on all takes mobile industry”) the pic at the top of this post is from the all-new S60 5th edition- a.k.a the OS for Nokia’s upcoming Tube (that’s Mr Nokia 5800 XpressMedia to you, squire).
So, is it? Well, it’s worth noting that the person who provided the snap to Mobile Royale is a well known S60 theme designer. This could mean that he as either been designing a theme for the new OS or - equally likely - has knocked up a proof of concept theme in his copious spare time.
It doesn’t look particularly remarkable at first glance but the devil may be in the details. It’s a 480×640 resolution shot, which could point to an increase in screen quality and there is a nice row of fingertip-sized icons on the top row, which suggests a doing away with that old-fashioned, pre-iPhone Applications button.
Presumably, eagle-eyed viewers of the Dark Knight will be able to let us know if anything like this popped up? Go see it on IMAX, you should get a decent look.
For some reason, Nokia have added some footage to their S60 Touch UI demo video.
The clip is very ‘lifestyle photography’, with lots of doing aspirational things in parks and tilting your head all the way back to laugh at your glamorous friend’s jokes. It does show off some nice-looking UI code, however. It’s all very iPhone, obviously, but still has that Nokia feel.
The web browser looks great, and the way apps launch with a little zoom animation looks very slick indeed.
TechCrunch have a load of photos and video clips from the Google I/O keynote that gives us our first proper look at a working Android system - and very impressive it looks, too.
Some real effort has gone into the GUI, which combines a lot of the ease of use from the iPhone with some nice ‘power user’ touches. I particularly like Android’s take on the ’swipe to unlock’ screen - you have the option of a simple single-finger swipe or of using a more complex pattern of your choosing - it’s a simple idea but gives you the choice of more security if you need it without slowing you down by demanding a password or PIN.
This video clip shows off one particularly cool feature that makes use of the prototype phone’s built in compass to create an ‘augmented reality’ version of Google Earth. Among the applause you can almost hear the assembled developer’s brains going ‘ding!’ as they all simultaneously think of different cool uses for the technology.
Your move, Apple.
It’s something of a foregone conclusion that Nokia are planning, if not an iPhone killer, at least an iPhone worrier.
The near mythical Nokia Tube shows the kind of thing we can expect to emerge from the Finn’s R&D labs Real Soon Now with a multi-touch, tactile-feedback display and a nice big screen for mobile video and web browsing. If you want to reaslly take on Apple, though, you need something a bit special.
An interesting patent application has come to light that might show the direction Nokia is looking in further down the road.
In June 2007 (just 6 months after the iPhone was announced) Nokia filed a patent for a ‘touchless’ UI using Ultrasonic Transducers set around the edge of a phone’s display.
The tiny emittters/sensors beam out tightly focused soundwaves and detect them as they bounce back from nearby objects. By triangulating several sensors, the handset can track the motion of the user’s fingers in 3D space and identify controlling gestures.
The full article over at UnWired.com has much more technical detail and is worth a look.
I’m a bit dubious about the practicaility of this, to be honest. Certain aspects - for example using gestures to navigate a web page - seem like they would work well, but I’m less enthusiastic about an on-screen keyboard that you can’t even touch. Also, this seems rather better suited to two-handed use, which isn’t how most of us would choose to operate a phone.
If waggling your hands around in front of your phone reminds you a bit of the Nintendo Wii.. well, what was it Nokia were saying a few weeks ago about seeking inspiration in the popular games console?
It’s testament to how deeply the iPhone has got under people’s skins that there are so many ‘tribute’ skins, mods and hacks out there, designed to make your humble handset look like Apple’s finest. Windows Mobile seems to be particularly afflicted/blessed - most likely due to the proliferation of touchscreens, although expect that to change if Nokia ever roll out their Touch UI.
iFonz is a pretty decent stab at the form - it’s a well-written bit of freeware for Windows Mobile that smoothly animates an iPhone-esque interface that looks pretty convincing -until you actually open an app and return to uglytown with a bump.
Here is a short video of iFonz in action (caution, video may cause neck strain) and full marks to me for finishing this post without any reference to Happy Days.
If you fancy a change of scene while you are waiting for the new versions of Windows Mobile, why not use JGUI to give your version 6 handset a Vista makeover?
JGUI ’skins’ your phone and replaces the start page with something not unlike a Vista desktop - complete with little widgets for weather reports, the clock and an RSS reader.
The app is designed with landscape-mode Windows Mobile devices in mind (although it should still work if you have a portrait-mode phone, it just might look a bit more cramped). The freeware edition only skins your start page, while the full ($19.95) version skins the whole OS and comes with free updates.
It looks great, as you can see from this video (which features an unbelievably sl-o-o-w commentary that sounds as though the reviewer’s batteries are running down)
As many iPhone early-adopters have noted, touchscreens are prone to being covered in greasy fingerprints after even light use. Obviously, someone at Nokia has realised this and decided to ‘leverage’ the phone+dabs combination by patenting a novel use for fingerprint recognition.
Nokia’s patent details not only a method of using a touch-sensitive display as a fingerprint scanner, but also a way of associating unique actions with the prints from different fingers.
Swiping your index finger over the screen could open your contacts list, say, and then a quick smear from your thumb might send an email. Perhaps you could expand the list of shortcuts by using your toes - who knows? At this stage it really is too early to tell.
Quite how practical this would be in action remains to be seen (particularly if you try doing it one-handed) but it one-ups Apple, and surely that is the main thing.
