Nokia talks up Symbian S60, now with touchscreen support

Plus sensor technologies and "complete" web video experience

16 October 2007 16:09 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Nokia has announced that it continues to implement new innovations for S60 on Symbian OS in order to develop the best possible mobile experiences for people.

S60 will introduce new features that enhance the user experience and enable manufacturers, developers and operators to design new types of mobile devices, applications and services.

The touch user interface in S60 smartphone software offers licensees the opportunity to develop devices with a variety of input methods, whether it is a touch screen with a traditional keypad, touchscreen with a QWERTY keyboard or touch screen alone, supporting both finger or stylus optimised input, in addition to the range of access options that already exist today.

S60 touch user interface comes with support for tactile feedback, which means that there is a physical pulse and feedback when the user taps on the screen. This provides better awareness of the device's response improving the user experience.

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

From motion and orientation to proximity and light, sensor technology is expanding to new areas and shaping the future for mobiles.

S60 brings sensor support to the platform as a generic solution enabling support for a range of sensors in S60 devices. These technologies 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 develop rapidly and easily impressive graphical effects and new types of interactions, further increasing the 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 web sites and Flash Video, such as YouTube, as they would do on their desktops.

Full tags

Phones, Mobile phone industry, Nokia, Operating Systems