S60 Touch Interface Launched
Today at the Symbian Smartphone Show Nokia showed S60 running with a touch interface. The touch interface will support both finger and stylus input, has full multi lingual support, has support for tactile feedback (haptics) and is backwardly compatible with the existing S60 platform.
Context & Ripple Effects
Touch went mainstream on smartphones earlier in 2007 — HTC's Touch launch in June put a finger-driven interface on Windows Mobile — and Nokia, described in early October as the world's biggest cellphone maker, has so far answered only with hardware like the N95 8GB that began shipping this month. Today at the Symbian Smartphone Show it finally showed its software answer: S60 running with a touch layer supporting finger and stylus input, multilingual text entry and tactile feedback.
The strategic detail is backward compatibility: unlike a clean-sheet touch OS, this extends the existing S60 platform, which matters because S60 is licensed across the industry and anchors an installed application base. It lands amid a busy autumn for the platform — the Windows Live tie-up with Microsoft in August and the Navteq mapping acquisition announced October 1 both deepen what S60 devices can do.
First-order effects
- S60 licensees and developers gain a touch option that runs existing S60 applications unmodified, letting device makers add touch-screen models without abandoning their current software catalogs.
- Nokia's own roadmap gains a direct counter to HTC-style touch devices on Windows Mobile, keeping its flagship line competitive on input method as well as camera and memory specs.
Second-order effects
- Rivals built around resistive-plus-stylus conventions face pressure to match finger input and haptic feedback, since Nokia's demo sets those as the baseline features buyers will ask for.
- Component suppliers of touch panels and haptic actuators gain a volume customer: if the world's largest handset maker standardizes touch across S60 volumes, panel pricing and availability shift in favor of scale suppliers.
Third-order effects
- If backward-compatible retrofits prove good enough, incumbent platforms can defend their developer ecosystems against clean-sheet touch operating systems — but the same legacy UI assumptions risk capping how natural the touch experience feels, a tension every retrofitting platform must resolve.
- Touch stops being a premium differentiator and becomes table stakes for smartphone platforms, pushing competition up the stack toward services and content — the direction Nokia's Navteq deal and bundled software partnerships already point.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are converging on direct-manipulation touch as the default input model, with incumbents retrofitting touch onto legacy platforms to protect installed app bases rather than starting over.