S60 4th edition will have touch screen support
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 11:14 pm PST In Symbian
Eugenia and her wonderful rants as usual. One of my favorite RSS feeds. Thanks for the bread recipes but care to share the Greek secret to Baklava? I can never get the syrup right!
Anyways: In this piece she tackles the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E90. That isn’t what interests me, the little snippet on the bottom does:
Nokia announced officially today the E90. There is a lot to like in the device (e.g. GPS, 128 MB RAM, fast CPU, WiFi, A2DP etc), as you can see from the review here, but there is also a lot to dislike. A few of the negatives:1. Screen resolution is totally oddball. The handset grabs video in 640×480 for example, but the 800×352 screen resolution is not suitable to watch the video correctly. Additionally, it’s not suitable for widescreen DVD rips either. The screen resolution should have been either 800×480 (like the N800) or 852×480 (480p HD).
2. No USB charging.
3. microSD instead of a miniSD. I mean, come on! This is a large device, at least put some miniSD-HC support in there!
4. Unnecessarily long device. The video-call camera could have been on the right-hand side and the hangup/call buttons on the keyboard itself. I bet that if I try to type on that keyboard my small fingers won’t be able to reach the middle keys.
5. I just re-encoded a sample VGA video captured by the device and re-encoded with proper MP4 compression rate (at the same resolution/fps, same quality). Nokia’s version: 8.4 MB. My version: 2 MBs.Lastly, I would like to affirm everyone that the next major version of S60 (v4.0) will have touchscreen support. It’s an unavoidable market pressure for Nokia.
Source: Eugenia’s rants and thoughts
Oh … snap!
The only question now is when will S60 4th edition come out?
February 12th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
It is not any NDA info or secret rumor btw. It is simply a market pressure that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) will have to undergo. Nothing more. And the fact that their S80/S90 platforms are pretty much dead (even their new communicator now uses S60), they have no alternative but to add touchscreen support to S60. We might even see support for this even before a 4.0 release.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:06 am
all this internet winking, driving me bonkers
February 13th, 2007 at 5:18 am
Touchscreen..sigh! I always compare stulys to a mouse: don’t we all want to use the keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse? They are so much more convenient.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:18 am
I have to agree with Henrikki. I don’t much care for touchscreen devices. I’ve had the 8125 for a while from Cingular, and it’s just not really usable in high-use situations, like driving or walking around, in my opinion.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I have to disagree with you guys. I think touch and buttons can co exist very well together.
The iPhone is one extreme where there is only one button, but I definitely do like the idea of manipulating data with my finger.
Digital cameras for example, all the latest ones come with a touch screen lcd. It makes operation that much easier.
Touch is just more natural.
Do you use just a keyboard to surf the web? The mouse is your companion.
February 13th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
As a current user of a Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) W950i, I have to say that I now *hate* touchscreen phones - iPhone lovers will pay dearly to find out how cr@p a touchscreen interface can be. A touchscreen on a phone does not improve functionality in any way shape or form - however as a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N800 owner I know how well they can work on bigger devices, but not a phone.
I miss the keyboard shortcuts on my previous SE T610 phone - on the W950i I have to wade through several menus and options before carrying out the simplest of tasks.
I’m done with SE phones and will be returning to Nokia just as soon as the N95 is available on T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) in the UK.
December 12th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
“the 800×352 screen resolution is not suitable to watch the video correctly”
*lol* Have you ever been visiting a cinema? The E90 screen is the only suitable screen!