Nokia Announces Touch Interface for S60

Nokia unveiled its new touch interface for S60 smartphones at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London earlier today.

According to a press statement from Nokia, the new software would allow licensees to develop devices with a variety of input methods; such as touchscreen with traditional keypad, QWERTY keyboard, or standalone touchscreen, supporting both finger or stylus optimized input.

The interface comes with support for tactile feedback, which means there is a physical pulse and feedback when a user taps on the screen. This will provide better awareness of the device's response.

Existing S60 3rd Edition applications will run on touch-enabled devices unmodified. Tools will be made available for developers to further optimize the touch experience of their applications.

Other innovations to the S60 smartphone software platform include sensor technologies and a complete web video experience.

The former will open up a new kinetic world to the user and offer completely new opportunities for application and game developers. Also, the new UI Accelerator toolkit will allow device manufacturers to rapidly develop impressive graphical effects and new types of interactions, increasing user appeal and excitement.

S60 will be the first mobile software platform to deliver the complete Web video experience as Flash Video will be integrated with the web Browser for S60. This allows people to view on the go Flash-enabled websites and Flash Video, such as YouTube.

"S60 on Symbian OS offers a great platform to innovate with Internet services," said Matti Vänskä, Vice President, Mobile Software Sales and Marketing, Nokia. "We see experiences converging, and people demanding more and more of the functionalities that smartphones offer, both of which highlight the significance of ease of use."

The technologies are expected to be available for all S60 device manufacturers during 2008.