Nokia Talks Tactile, or Haptics Sure Feels Good

My week in the London sun is over, as is the Symbian Smartphone Show which is the reason I was in London in the first place. Of course, mobile food proved to be almost as interesting as-- and a lot tastier than -- mobile phones.

Of all the announcements at the show, one of the most interesting was that by Nokia vice president Lee Williams who openly talked (albeit sketchily) about Nokia's plans for an S60-based touch interface to be released in 2008.

The Nokia touch interface will: support devices with/without keyboard, stylus, and finger inputs; provide tactile feedback via haptics technologies; be multilingual with support for Asian languages; sport an advanced sensor framework and a UI acceleration toolkit will be provided for developers for easier adoption; support multiple gestures (possibly customizable); be backwards compatible with older S60 applications; and embed Flash Lite 3 for desktop-like video experiences. In particular, I like the idea of tactile feedback when you touch the device with your finger -- the spot you touch vibrates.

Nokia is a company known for doing really, really extensive research before rolling out new products. From here, however, it looks like Apple with the iPhone has already made that easy for Nokia -- all Nokia has to do is *not* do everything Apple did, and do everything Apple didn't.

For a taste of what Williams had to say, check out this youtube.com video of portions of his keynote presentation.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 06:19 PM  Permalink