No more leaks, no more speculation, no more blurry photographs, the Nokia Tube is finally official and it’s called the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Launched at Nokia’s Remix event in London yesterday, not only is Nokia’s first touchscreen handset a member of the XpressMusic family, it’s also getting in on the Comes With Music action too.
But let’s talk about that screen. It’s a 3.2″ widescreen display with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio and of course, it’s a full touchscreen. It seems that it isn’t a multi-touch effort, but the interface, includes what Nokia is calling the Media Bar and the Contacts Bar, which are essentially drop down touchscreen menus for controlling music and contacts functions on the phone. The Media Bar also offers direct access to the web with a browser that supports flash content.
Continue reading ‘Nokia officially unveils its first touchscreen handset, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic’
There are 1,001 internetweb rumours running wild at any given moment in time, and 987 of them are generally false. But we’re inclined to give credence to one on mobile blog JustAMP claiming that Nokia’s long-awaited ‘Tube’ phone (otherwise known as the 5800) will go on sale in the UK on 8th October.
Why? Well, the timing fits for one. Nokia has been talking up its first touchscreen handset for some months now, and it’s already been featured in bat-blockbuster The Dark Knight. What’s more, Nokia seems to be using the UK as a test market at the moment, for example launching its Comes With Music service first here next month.
But the other thing that makes us think JustAMP may be talking sense is this Tube rumour was published alongside another rumour about the N96 getting a version of the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up TV service - something that’s been officially announced since JustAMP’s post was published.
So, Nokia Tube phone, 8th October. Fingers crossed this rumour’s on the money.
Ok, time for another round of pics of Nokia’s most famous unannounced handset. This time we are not getting any more smudgetastic hardware shots, but some much more focussed snaps of the device’s internet browser from the folks over at Daily Mobile who snaffled the leak.
It has to be said, where touchscreens are concerned in mobiles, the function that stands to benefit the most from a more intuitive interface is the internet browser and from what we can see here, everything looks much like you might expect.
That said, things do look a little cramped on there, despite the generous screen size and seeing as Apple has sewn up almost all of the most useful patents in this area, chances are zooming into specific parts of web pages won’t be quite as dream-like as it is on the iPhone. A landscape viewing mode would be nice too, but hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Nokia could well have a sleeve full of solutions for these sorts of things up its, erm, sleeves.
More pics after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Tube watch: Nokia’s touchscreen secret lets its browser slip this week…’
Can’t wait for Nokia’s upcoming Tube touchscreen phone? Join the club. But if you want an early glimpse at the handset, you’ll need to get down your local cinema to see new Batman flick The Dark Knight. Why? Well, the Tube - or XpressMedia 5800 to give it its less interesting official title - appears on-screen for up to five seconds, according to Engadget Mobile. It’s owned by Morgan Freeman’s character apparently, who’s clearly got some contacts to blag unreleased handsets. Either that, or it was a product placement deal, of course. Even weirder, the elderly 6630 gets a starring role in the film too. Watch out for them both when the film hits screens here in the UK later this month.
Nokia has been notably slow to respond to the demand for touchscreen mobile phones, as it was in the past when clamshell handsets were all the rage. However, the company intends to make up for its touchscreen tardiness in the second half of this year.
Head of devices Kai Oistamo has reiterated Nokia’s intention to launch a series of touchscreen handsets, but says it won’t necessarily be going head to head with the iPhone and its high-end rivals.
Instead, Nokia wants to target the “volume” (i.e. cheaper) market. It could be a smart move, given the millions of people who use Nokia’s simple candybar handsets. The question, of course, is whether these people are ready to ditch their keypads…
Nokia’s Haptikos project is an attempt to incorporate haptic feedback into touchscreen controls - essentially, making a touchscreen feel ‘real’ as if you were manipulating physical objects (such as keys or buttons) rather than just dragging your fingertip over smooth plastic.
Primitive haptic feedback can be achieved simply by making the entire handset vibrate, but as this patent application (unearthed by Into Mobile) illustrates, Nokia is looking to create something a bit more special.
Haptikos uses voltage sensitive elements within a film over the touchscreen. WHen voltage is adjusted, these element can be raised or lowered to change the texture of the touchscreen surface.
By raising and lowering these ‘bumps’ Haptikos can simulate the feeling of pressing and releasing a physical button -something that can be further enhanced by visual and audio feedback.
If you have ever used a touchscreen keyboard you will know that it is sometimes hard to tell if you have hit a ‘key’ or not - feedback like this will make something like the Nokia Tube’s keyboard much easier to use.
There is a full PDF of the application available here.
Nokia is up to something.
Take a look at OpenAtYourOwnRisk.com(flash required). It’s a willfully obscure viral site that you have to open by aligning some symbols in a combination lock (don’t worry, it’s not hard).
Once you get through the ’security’ you will see some nicely done clockwork imagery, hear creepy music and read some rambling tosh about a bunch of royal types creating a clip of ‘grande weirdness’ (hundreds of years ago, before the invention of, er, movie clips) that they have placed in a box with four seals.
Clues to help you unlock the box have been hidden in important historical artifacts like Edison’s Lightbulb, Apollo Eleven and, er, the Nokia Download Store.
All will be revealed next Monday and you can sign up for an email alert to notify you as soon as the seals are cracked open.
What could it be? The Nokia Tube, perhaps? Doesn’t seem ‘grande weird’ enough, though - unless we have been WAY wrong about what the Tube will involve. Suggestions in the comments, if you please.
Well, it might be a leak or it might be a cunning attempt to tred on Apple’s big 3G iPhone reveal.
Either way, some new photos of the 5800 XpressMedia (aka the ‘Tube’) have emerged. The Tube is reportedly Nokia’s answer to Apple’s finest with a revolutionary new touchscreen UI.
Assuming these are real it.. looks just like an iPhone, really. The major external differences seem to be the 3.2 Megapixel camera (with the now ubiquitous Carl Zeiss optics) and Dual LED flash (that’s two more flash LEDs than the iPhone folks!) the Nokia branding and the way the screen doesn’t look as nice.
Still, its early days yet and the proof of this pudding will be in the, er, using. If the new UI is up to snuff then we can forgive a few unsightly design decisions. Something that seems to have drawn the ire of the blogosphere is the pictured stylus. This is seen as somehow ‘impure’ and harkening back to the bad old days of Palm Pilots and WinMo atrocities.
Personally, I don’t mind a stylus and it’s interesting that in the demo video this is shown as being optional - switching to a stylus for fine grained control seems fair enough, espeiclaly if you have chunky fingers.
Also
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.
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?
