The big thing about touchscreen mobile phones is that, theoretically, they do away with all the old frustrations of mobile user interfaces, heralding a new dawn of tactile touch navigation. Or something like that. The iPhone has done a pretty good job, but other handset manufacturers are trying to figure out how they can improve on Apple’s UI.
LG’s solution? Hold a competition for designers to come up with a new mobile UI, with a $14,000 prize. Check out the winning entry. It’s called ‘Driving’, and it’s an on-screen steering wheel. I wouldn’t fancy text messaging with that, but imagine playing a driving game…
(via Engadget Mobile)
Apple has pretty much sewn up the whole multi-touch user interface malarkey on the iPhone via a series of pa
tents it registered during the device’s development. This obviously makes it impossible for other companies to imitate any of the functions without incurring a whooping great bill from Apple.
But that doesn’t mean that companies can’t try and work around the patents by coming up with some ideas of their own which is exactly what Nokia has been doing behind closed doors for some time now. A patent unearthed by Unwired View that dates back to six months post iPhone announcement, indicates that Nokia has all manner of wacky ideas planned for its hotly tipped S60 touch interface.
Besides workarounds for many of the basic functions that Apple has tied up legally Nokia has also developed an interface method that doesn’t even require you to touch the screen where the phone reacts to hand gestures made in three dimensional space and can even track the movement of your hand. Sounds very space age indeed though we can’t help but feel we would look like a berk if caught trying to conduct what would look for all the world like a primitive form of sign language with our handset. Still very interesting though.
(Via Unwired View)
