Everyone seems to be in a big fervor over the 5 second display of what’s been dubbed as "Nokia’s iPhone." All the Apple Fanboys are obviously in an uproar over the notion that Nokia had the juevos to copy their overlord god chosen brand. As was pointed out by Stefan (and I heard it, too), Anssi Vanjoki, when questioned about it, said, "If there is something good in the world we copy with pride." I agree with that. If something works, and is popular, then why not? To the die-hard Nokia fans, it’s not like they’re going to shift every single handset to a touch-based system, so don’t worry.
As Stefan also mentions, there is some misinformation floating around as to who’s been working on touch interfaces first, and I want to lay those to rest. In the press event, Anssi said that Nokia’s been working with touch interfaces already, with the 770 and N800 Internet Tablets, and while he’s correct, he didn’t quite reach all the way back. Let’s take a look at 4 touch-interface phones that Nokia produced several years ago…
The first that I want to mention is the 7700/7710, as showcased here by Maximus at the Just Another Mobile Phone blog (pics from Esato). This was running Symbian OS, with a Series 90 overlay. The 7700 never made it to market, but the 7710 did. It came equipped with a VGA cam and the full landscape touchscreen, with tri-band 900/1800/1900 GSM. Obviously it wasn’t really a hot seller when it came out in 2004, so they shelved it.
There was also the 6108, released back in 2003, which was a regular 6000-series handset with a flip-down keypad that revealed a stylus/fingertip touch interface. This was only released for the Asian markets, however. You can check out Eldar’s review over at Mobile-Review.com here.
Another one that is alot more recent (so recent, in fact, that they haven’t even released it) is the Aeon, which is really only something from the Nokia Research Labs, but shows the things that they’re envisioning for the future of touch interfaces on phones.
Those are the only 3 that I recall personally. If anyone knows of any others, please leave them in the comments. Point being, touch is nothing new to Nokia. It’s something that they’ve had in their labs for quite a while, and I have no doubts that they’ve been watching the other touch devices, including the iPhone, WinMo, Palm, and other devices, to see how people are using touch-enabled devices. The Internet Tablets have also given them some primary research as to what consumers have come to expect from touching their devices.
What do you think? Do you think Nokia should steer clear of touch interfaces? Do you think they’ll just copy what everyone else has, or is there room for innovation still?
