Screenshots have appeared showing off the new S60 Touch UI in VGA resolution thanks to ICEman_c81, Mobile Royale and Symbian-Freak!
It seems as though these havn’t been taken from an actual device, but from the latest version of Carbide.ui (an S60 theme editor) - even so - it gives us a sneak preview of what to expect before we get to see these touch based devices in action!
Read on for more!!!
As you can see, the interface itself closely resembles S60 Feature Pack 2 (and not much has really changed) but it has been optimised for input from a finger or stylus. This is so that users will be more comfortable with moving to the new Touch UI without it being a completely different user experience to the current S60 platform.
The main change in the look of the UI itself are the shortcuts found at the top of the screen which are very large and ‘finger friendly’! These shortcuts seem to provide access to the menu, active standby screen/home screen and the numberpad for making calls.
When you are viewing the screen in landscape mode, you can see that the shortcuts are now available on the left hand side with the addition of a further shortcut for what seems to control the screen orientation.
What is great is the fact that Nokia seem to be moving to higher resolution screens in their devices. I personally think this is a great move as images will look much ‘crisper’ on screen and will be fantastic for navigating through web pages etc as much more information will be able to be displayed on screen at any particular time.
For more details of what we can expect with the new Touch UI, head on over to Symbian-Freak for a detailed overview using the following link:
http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/007/12/nokia_world_2007_s60_touch_ui.htm
For now though, here are some more screenshots that have been uncovered!!!
What do you think about the new Touch UI? Are you looking forward to it???
Filed under: Technology | Tagged: News
Great info - keep up the good work!
As a designer I must say that I don’t like it very much. I am a bit disappointed by the fact that the icons are so 2004 - they look already aged. Also I think that there is not much contrast between inactive and hover, and it may cause problems in some circumstances such as under the sunshine. Third, for instance at the horrizontal view I see some information design mistakes such as the header visually governing the whole screen, when in reality “Contacts” is just a sub-application and its title should be not over the task-switching button, the home button and so on. Fourth, the scrolling bar seems too close to the buttons and may be problematic. I am a Nokia fan but it’s hard to be when such a great corporation brings forth this kind of mediocre UIs.
Anything addressing the “fat finger” issue gets my attention.
But I must agree with Andreas - change for the sake of change.
I understand the need, but it seems most of these changes can be addressed other ways.
Mobile market is demanding. Yet the application side of the house is still a bit slow.