Symbian-Guru.com

Edit: This is Rita’s post, but I wanted to add this video that I was able to record of Minna Karvonen demoing the new S60 Touch UI at Nokia World 2007 last week:

Click To Play

Some say Nokia and S60 took them by surprise by announcing the touch UI at the Symbian Smartphone Show because there were no major leaks about it. I don’t know if I was surpsised or not. In fact, I had been expecting and eagerly waiting for the touch interface for such a long time, I was surprised not to see it announced even earlier! If you remember, the news of the touch UI made it’s way through a couple of first-day posts, gathered here by Ricky and then the excitement drove all the way down the extinction road until a couple of weeks ago when Rafe Blanford of AAS posted in his Evolving S60 piece an examination of the announcement as a whole (Touch UI, Sensor Framework and Accelerator Toolkit). Then it was nothing, zero, blank.

Maybe there was no more material for bloggers to chew on….

But the announcement video (this link is to the one with the best quality so far, posted by Stefan) and all 3 s60.com flash screenshots had, in my opinion, so many other wonders that were still undiscovered. After the initial rush and fever, I settled down for a while and spent a couple of hours watching and repeating (almost 30 times) the announcement video and looking at every detail in the flash screenshots posted on S60’s website. I noticed a couple of twists, things that only lots of patience and many pause/rewind/play presses could reveal to you. Head on after the break for all the dirty details and be sure to have a cup of coffee. This will take a while.

Disclaimer: probably the S60 touch UI will have many modifications until the final release, so you should know that these facts and questions have ONLY been based on the aforementioned video and screenshots.

So here it is, the facts behind S60 Touch UI, some questions and assumptions and a couple of whishes I remembered while writing the post. All screenshots are posted at the end, as a Flickr slideshow. Just click on a picture to get the title and some description.

Facts

1. Transitions are now smoother than before with more simple eye-candy animations.
2. Active applications (scr1): there is now a new addition to all “Options” menus. It is Active Applications. It should be a more visible task switcher, compared to the long-menu key press that is, and should hence be more accessible to all non-techie mortals out there.
3. The profile switcher (scr 2) can now be easily accessed with a press on the standby screen (around the operator region)
4. Some themes should be provided by s60.com (scr 3) plus they are instantly installed and run once they are downloaded.
5. The Menu is now called Applications (scr 4), which makes a little bit more sense in general.
6. The main standby now, in the form of the active standby only holds place for 4 shortcuts (scr 5) and not 6 like we’re used to on S60 3rd. Probably for a more finger friendly approach.
7. The time (ie 7:45) appears in almost all menu bars, except in the Applications main menu and web browser while surfing the page. Good addition!
8. The menu bar has different height in different applications: main standby, text message/contacts, menu, bookmarks, browser,…
9. There seems to be a trend to introduce 3 on-screen quick function access icons in major applications (I will call it 3-icon-set for further referral). Examples so far: send/edit/delete in Gallery (scr 1), reply/forward/delete in SMS viewing (scr 10), contacts/attachments/send in message writing (scr 11) and play/pause, FF, RW in slideshow (and probably in video). These should make it easier for the touchscreen user to access the 3 main actions performed in the application he is using.
10. The message type now automatically shifts from text message (scr 6) to multimedia message (scr 7) when an attachment is inserted in the SMS.
11. The on-screen keyboard doesn’t have a dedicated numbers line (scr 8) unlike windows mobile for example.
12. The handwriting and on-screen keyboard pads seem to be resizable (scr 8 – look at the top-let cross-like shape on the pads)
13. The “Download” remains the first icon shown in the gallery (scr 9 – look at the gallery in the background).
14. The Gallery now is named Media and holds pictures and videos, which have a small video icon (scr 12) on the lower right of their icons.
15. Two new additions to the Gallery include Slideshow and Albums (scr 1).

Unanswered Questions

1. Is the menu key gone for good? How will Applications be accessed? Through one of the 3 upper tabs or the left soft-button on the main standby?
2. What are the 3 upper tabs on the standby screen? (scr 5) My guess is: web browser (almost sure), Applications menu (maybe), settings or connections or messages (wouldn’t bet on it).
3. What are the 2 soft-button assigned shortcuts (scr 5): Options or Applications on the left? And is it Exit on the right? If it is Exit, what would you be exiting from?
4. Will the OS instantly catch all application files sent or downloaded on the phone and directly install them? Like the wedding themes example?
5. In the video on the 1:38 time, the girl selects two recipients for her MMS. She selects them both the same way and for the same amount of time, yet when the first one is selected she can still scroll to select another, while when the 2^nd is selected, the contacts submenu closes and she’s taken back to the MMS. How?
6. Are there really 2 different types of gallery interfaces in portrait (scr 9 taken from the video) and landscape (scr 12 taken from the s60.com flash)? If not why were the portrait gallery still left in the device used for the demo?
7. Why are the 3 contacts/attachments/send lower icons absent from the message composing in the video? Again, is the demo video a previous version and the flash screenshots taken from a more recent one?
8. How is the handwriting pad summoned? By simply tapping the screen and starting to write?
9. What are the “AB” (Capslock/Shift/Nothing mode), “12” (Number/Letter mode), *# (Symbol/Letter mode) / En (Language choosing) doing on the screen while in handwriting mode? (scr 11) Are we supposed to change those modes/settings in order to help the software recognize what exactly we are writing? Ie, let’s say I want to write “meet me at 1:30”, do I write “meet me at” in normal mode then press 12 and write “1” then press *# and write “:” then write “30”? Isn’t the software supposed to recognize what I noted no matter in what settings I wrote it? If yes and they are only useful for the on-screen keyboard, then why are they eating screen-estate in handwriting mode?
10. What is the fourth type of attachment that can be added in MMS? The first 3 are: pictures, videos, sounds. So the fourth? (Scr 13)

Wishes

1. Customizable standby screen. Please. After using the Today screen on Windows Mobile, I know that a great standby module lets developers unleash really handy and amazing software for it. Please use it as an example.
2. Theme removal should be easier than now, ie doable without the need of a memory card reader, a PC and lots of tech skills.
3. The 3 upper tabs on the main standby should be configurable to one’s likings.
4. Choose only one height for all menus bars, and stick with it. Maybe make the browser’s bar smaller of go immediately full screen, but consistency is always better than random choosing.
5. Why is there a media icon inside a media folder? (scr 14) Isn’t that redundancy? Name the media icon Gallery because that’s what it is.
6. One more consistency issue: I assume that the play/pause, FF, RW icons in slideshows and videos will be d-pad compatible or controllable. Yet the other 3-icon-set like probably won’t be. Why introduce in the same screen space, in different applications, icons that have different d-pad related behavior?
7. Let Albums in Gallery permit the creation of a true folder in which images and videos can be stuffed. If not, and the only purpose is to join together by linking some media files taken on the same event or in the same purpose,…, without creating true folders, then that true folder feature should be implemented somewhere.

This is it. It was long and took me a while but I’m excited about the new features I found out about, like the clock showing in all menu bars, the active applications and the automatic message shifting from SMS to MMS. How much more or less the touch UI will feature on it’s official release, well, I don’t know. But I do know that we can expect some really nice and handy additions. I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

What do you think of the changes? Did any of you notice anything different, anything new, anything else? Or do you have another explanation to something I mentioned here? Do you have any other wishes?