Video: Nokia shows off iPhone-like S60 Touch user interface

Nokia have been showing off the S60 Touch, a touch screen user interface for their N Series of mobile phones that will also become part of the S60 User Interface platform. As such, it’s not just Nokia who’ll benefit from this glorious iPhone-like user interface – it’s any other mobile manufacturer who’s currently using S60 in their phones (Samsung, for example).

You can see a video of the S60 Touch after the jump.


Nokia was showing off the new S60 Touch UI at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London. Although not quite as slick as the iPhone’s interface (it doesn’t support multi-touch, for example, so you can’t resize a picture by moving two fingers across the screen), it’s very, very close to it.

It also uses a stylus as well as a finger, whereas the iPhone is all fingers, but that’s an advantage in my eyes, as typing on the iPhone’s keyboard is not as intuitive as Apple would like to claim.

Nokia’s N series phones will come with the S60 Touch UI next year, as will many other S60 equipped phones from the other major manufacturers. Given that these phones will have much better features than the iPhone, and won’t come with such a restrictive network contract, they’re going to provide some serious competition for Apple.

No wonder Apple released the iPod Touch (essentially an iPhone without the phone) – if the iPhone is overtaken by its competitors, the company can always go back to selling iPods.

Those of you wanting an iPhone for Christmas might just want to wait a bit longer for the new S60 Touch UI phones to arrive. Then you get the best of both worlds – glorious user interface and great features.

[Source: UnwiredView]