Nokia expands S60 UI with touch user interface

Nokia is adding some new features in S60 on Symbian OS, aiming at enhanced user experience and enabling 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, touch screen with a qwerty keyboard or touch screen alone, supporting both finger or stylus optimized 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 optimize the touch experience of their applications.

S60 now brings sensor support to the platform as a generic solution enabling support for a range of sensors in S60 devices. New UI Accelerator toolkit will allow device manufacturers to develop graphical effects and new types of interactions.

Nokia is also integrating Flash Video 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.

S60 and mobile operator 3 will demonstrate at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London a X-Series devices based on S60. However these technologies will be available for all S60 device manufacturers during 2008.