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Nokia introduced the latest version of its S60 smartphone platform last fall, the first with a touch/gesture-based user interface. It plans to show the upgrade off at this month’s giant Mobile World Congress (formally the 3GSM Wold Congress), according to Nokia’s ‘See Into S60‘ blog.
The new S60 interface, which also adds support for Haptic or tactile feedback, is obviously Nokia’s response to the iPhone and onslaught of other touch-run handsets, such as HTC’s Touch models, for example.
Nokia’s blog say it plans to demonstrate new innovations in the S60 user interface at the Mobile World Congress:
While the S60 design is kept familiar and consistent S60 renews and innovates to fill different user needs and provides alternatives for developers, manufacturers and Operators to design new type of applications, mobile devices and services. Now S60 expands the UI offering by Touch UI with tactile feedback to create new type of devices and applications and by UI Accelerator Toolkit to create graphically stunning applications.
It will also demo the platform’s advanced sensors and sensor framework, the full Web browsing experience, how developers can bring their own Internet innovation to S60, technology to create innovative experiences, S60 and Internet community services, a S60 device showcase, and how to personalize or tune an S60 smartphone.
With touch or haptic feedback users feel a physical pulse when tapping a display.
Nokia says all current S60 3rd Edition applications will be able to run just fine on the upcoming touch-enabled S60, unmodified; although developers will be free to enhance their software for S60’s new and improved capabilities.
Like the UIQ platform, S60 runs on top of the Symbian operating system. Until now, if a Symbian smartphone vendor wanted to offer a touch interface, then UIQ was their only choice.
Nonetheless, S60 is by far the most popular smartphone platform in the world, accounting for 53 percent of the global market share during the second quarter of this year, according to Canalys.
Nokia wants it to stay that way.
This article was first published on PDAStreet.com.
