The Real S60 Touch: Nokia fans prepare for an anticlimax.

Michael Oryl, Editor of MobileBurn gets a live demonstration of S60 touch.

Personally, I’m somewhat embarrassed to be a Nokia fan. Since the dawn of the “iPhone phenomenon”, we knew that once S60 touch is unveiled, it would be immediately compared to the iPhone. I felt that the only way Nokia could make an impact into the new paradigm of a touch UI if they could to replicate something similar to their concept video of Nokia Touch UI as seen some years ago. I had a lot of expectations.

But there’s nothing new about it. It’s just S60 with a touch screen. Yes, I know it’s barely ready hence the UI not even being shown on a handset instead emulated on a pc via external tablet display, but I really didn’t expect it to be this underwhelming. What is up with the photo viewing? The current S60 scroll was really nice, good enough to fool people into thinking it was from the iPhone in the video below.

I’m not sure whether to feel content on the whole “better than nothing” mentality. I have at times prodded the N82/N95’s screen absent mindedly thinking it would activate like the N800 I was browsing on. At times like that, I guess I would have welcomed this touch UI. If Nokia are trying to tempt the iPhone crowd away from their Jebus phone, this UI isn’t going to do it. They want the snapy, sparkly, eye candy finger flicking within a simple menu structure. This just seemed everything but that.

Good luck to Miss Jen btw who’s getting stuck in to Sports Tracker and bringing us some wonderful pictures of her travels for the Nseries Urbanista Website. I had a post ready to tell you guys about the great Jenifer Hanen that I met in Chennai but I’ve just been dead with extreme Jet Lag. I’m like waking up at 3am and sleeping at 5pm, the time in between filled with lectures and research. I’ll get that up some time this afternoon.

Tags: S60 touch Nokia Symbian

Category: Nokia, Rant, S60