Does the Nokia S60 Resemble the iPhone?
7 Comments By Eran Abramson on November 10th, 2007 in Cellphones
The Nokia S60 has presented its great usability, but is it also innovative or a copy cat of the Apple iPhone or is it the iPod? It may be both.
In the video below, you can see a demo of the Nokia S60 user interface and experience suite. It illustrates wonderful and simple usability, along with a number of practical and daily used features.
Although this Nokia looks great at first, one has to wonder if we have seen it before. In this cell phone, there in one button that does it all…sounds familiar? That button acts like a scroll wheel, allowing you to scroll through the menu options, music, and photos. This kind of reminds me of a music player called the iPod. The video continues to show how to browse through your pictures with a ‘flip-book’ like motion and automatic alignment of the image if the phone is positioned differently. Where have we seen this before?
We can immediately see the resemblances between the new Nokia suite and some iPhone and iPod features and abilities. The one main and wonderful thing Nokia is said to have enhanced is the keyboard usability.
I have spoken to many who have tried or continually used the awesome looking on-screen keyboard of the iPhone. While it is highly innovative and practical, it has its flaws. Based on user’s feedback, it seems that the keyboard does not react in the manner hoped. The keys are just not large enough, wrong keys are pressed, and it doesn’t ‘feel’ as comfortable as our very own desktop or laptop keyboards. I know this is a phone, and it can’t be perfect, but it can come really close.
Nokia has created the sensation of pressing a real keyboard key on a cell phone. After a decade or so in development, they mention it was actually pretty easy to recreate. They use a Haptic Screen, (Haptikos) and have installed two separate sensor pads under the screen with a 0.1mm leeway, so when a user presses at the displayed keyboard, it feels the key being pressed.
This feature supposedly works so great that SlashGear, who have previously seen Nokia as followers changed their mind and declared them as leaders. This is a very strong claim, and we will just wait and see what the users will have to say.
Via: Red Ferret
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November 11th, 2007 at 6:21 am
The I phone set a new standard so every phone for a while will resemble it somewhat.
November 13th, 2007 at 3:59 am
Hi Justin, thanks for coming back.
True. The iPhone has set some new standards for cell phones, but Nokia has added this great keyboard feature. I believe the feeling of the keyboard, if done properly, will be a very important factor for people.
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