Handful of Nothing

Not too high. According to some websites, Antti Vasara, General Manager of the Finnish company said :

“Nokia is not too enthusiastic about touchscreens, since all their tests had shown that users prefer keyboard and joystick for an input device. But they are ready for touchscreens if they see the demand”

When I think about mobile phone, plain simple I can’t disagree. But when I look a little bit ahead in the future and also when I use my N95 with it gorgeous screens, I really miss some touch ability from the device. Of course I’m no parameter for that, but phones were luxury 10 years ago now they are commodities. Maybe today users think that touchscreen are not good, but in the future with technologies like Immersion’s tactile feedback (called vibetonz) touchscreen (more than multitouch) we can see a wide adoption (even if you don’t want to use it) of touchscreen.

I’m not saying that phisical keyboard should die. Not At all, but evolving an UI completly based on touchscreen is a need, and must be at any device manufacture’s design board today. Of course Nokia is a giant and as said by the GM they are ready, but my question is :

Are they ready like a regular S60 + touch or… are they ready with a ui made from scratch to be touchable?

Please… don’t hack s60 for touch nokia. please. And also : don’t use hildon or other window-like-but-with-static-windows metaphor for mobile devices. You can do a lot better than that.

if you want to read more about immersion’s technologies go here also . It is worth remembering that immersion is the company that took the Force feedback from the Playstation controller. At the same time I love this technologies, patents can have the opposite effect on great inventions : less people manufacturing, less choice, higher price, less adoption, a good technology dies.