DigiTimes has a couple of back-to-back rumors from its industry sources that could be of interest to Nokia fans. Yesterday, the Taiwanese rumor rag said that Nokia will adopt a Synaptics touchscreen integrated circuit (which may or may not support multi-touch) solution for an upcoming "high-end handset" due for launch in the 3rd quarter of 2009. To be clear, this is not the
N97 which is expected to go on sale in June. Now
DigiTimes adds that capacitive touch panel orders from Nokia have been received from Wintek, the same supplier fitting Nokia's
5800 with resistive touchscreens. We're big fans of silky smooth, capacitive glass panels on finger-friendly touchscreen phones so we'll be stoked if these rumors prove true.
Read -- Nokia adopts Synaptics touchscreen IC
Read -- Wintek lands orders from Nokia
posted May 15th 2009 4:56AM
But will the software still suck?
No, it won't. S60 software doesn't suck.
I'm guessing you've used a 5800 eh?
Not.
The S60 OS is very powerful, the Nokia 5800 is a good device
I don't own one and I'm still using my Nokia N95, I would've bought that phone if only it had a 5 MP camera.
Mind you that no touch OS was perfect from the start, even the iPhone's OS...
Yes. Nokia has just slapped a touch layer onto a 8 year old softkey based UI fossil, so of course it sucks. Try to use the SCROLLBAR with your finger LOL
Actually v21 of the 5th edition firmware is very very good...
The software does not suck there are 2 MAJOR flaws, no kinetic (flick) scrolling & no word suggestion/correction of keyboard input (like win mobile & android), fix these & Symbian will be the no1 software again.
.
@G. I.
I see that you've never tried S60 v5
You don't have to use the scrollbar to scroll down, just hold something in the menu and slide your finger downwards, as if your moving the item.
I hate how some people don't know that.
@MohammadAG:
That's perhaps an even worse implementation of scrolling, as it's completely unintuitive. It's evident that despite Nokia's efforts, Series 60 is way too oldschool to support touch properly. It worked decently in N95 and the like, but seriously, phones like the 5800 XpressMusic and Xperia X1i is the reason people think touch phones suck.
@Lundmark: did you use it and find it unintuitive? or do you just "think" its unintuitive?
I thought that too "before" I used it to find that it's completely easy and useful, actually better than using the scroll bar.
Wow... another plastic handset.... Nokia is so innovative. Oh! Wait... they do have metal casing... for their Vertu brand.
This is just good example of how much usa consumers know about nokia. Thought that's nokias fault. All of e series got metal casing. Test E55, E71, E51, E71 just for example. Whole 8xxx series is of course metal, but you would expect that. Many of the 6xxx series got metal casing like 6700 and 6300. N series is weaker, but at least N86 is going right direction with it's glass front. Then you could say Nokias are fat, but they are the ones who have been pushing the slimmest smartphone for past 3 years. E51, E71 and E55. I do like S60, but 5th edition could be much better so it would be superb if this capasitive ts "flagship" would be nokias first symbian foundation device. Hoping capacitive ts for N900 tablet too!!!
S60 is dying due to how much it sucks
S60 "sucks" because it's too advanced for these people. They prefer a dumbed down OS with eye-candies and fancy animations that give the illusion of "high tech" and hide its limitations.
@Muhammed:
I've used it and while it does work, it is not as intuitive as iPhone's flick scrolling, nor as smooth. Scroll bars might not be the best way of scrolling, but at least people have been used to it for 20 years or more.
I can only comment on the basis that I've actually owned one for about three months. It's great. I like it.
The rest of you can moan all you want. No-one cares.
This is only a minor improvement if Nokia continues to load its ogines with S60 crapware.
You gotta love iPhone's auto corrections. Ogines = Phones
Lol, the irony :D
Using an iPhone to slag off another phone whilst simultaneously highlighting a flaw in the iPhone SW :D
Yeah, I know. :P But it's due to the fact that I was trying to write in English with auto-correction set to Swedish.
Worst is he didn't see the irony...
How did I not see the irony by saying "I know"? Stupid.
@ Lundmark
So... you have to alter the phone's settings each and every time you want write a word in different language than the previous word?
How extremely convenient.
How about coming up with a solution which doesn't require word correction in the first place? Oh, right, Apple knows better. Apple knows better than you what you want to do with your device.
We are Apple. We are the overlords of people's preferences.
I also have questions for you fellow gadgeteers with experience using ExpressMusic 5800:
1. How is web browsing with latest firmware? I tested one 5800 at a Nokia Store, don't what the firmware revision was. Browsing engadget.com or any page for that matter was a horrific experience. Scrolling a page was extremely jerky and I kept clicking links when I wanted to zoom in or scroll. Are there several ways how to scroll a web page?
2. I didn't find a setting for "full screen browsing always on". Is it hidden somewhere?
3. Are there gestures for "back" and "forward" in the browser? Or do I have to bring the large buttons on the screen every time for these operations?
4. Can you "open in new window" links?
Looking forward to your answers, thank you!
Also, the screen orientation change was, at times, very laggy and unresponsive.
@EMS:
Uhh... Yes, of course. Every language has entirely different words which are used differently. It is impossible to build an auto correction feature that would predict several languages, since the end result would be horrendous.
You can turn it off as it is not a requirement, but it does help if you make a typo. You don't have to go back and correct manually most of the time.
I am glad to notice you've actually never tried it.
You didn't see the irony because you actually committed it. And you said "I know" *after* you were told of it. Stupid.
it still looks good, despite its flaws.
Nokia CEO announced day or two back that they will focus on low-end smartphones.
They are giving up on the high-end where Apple is with iPhone.
Um, no.
Nokia is releasing more cheap smartphones as there's big growth. In a few years practicly every phone will be a smartphone. Nokia has and never will state that they are retreating from high end phones. N97 is stil to come...
@BFish
Source? Got a link to that information?
I'm sorry, did you say the iPhone is high-end? =/
A capacitive screen would definitely be a sweet deal for Nokia's future touch devices. Hopefully these screens end up in the N97's version of the N95 8GB. Nokia completely destroyed that phone for me by announcing the hardware they're using for it. Can't wait to get rid of my iPhone for a proper phone. Maybe an N97 32GB or something heh. Quite a mouthful though
Hah, you won't have to wait too long for an N97 32GB considering that the N97 will have 32GB of built-in space as well as a slot for SDHC cards.
From all of the videos I've seen on YouTube, the N97's touchscreen is pretty nice, despite the fact that it is resistive.
Maybe I'll trade up from my N82-1?
Source:CEO Kallasvuo Interview in Dagens Nyheter (in swedish):
http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/sa-ska-nokia-vaxa-sig-annu-storre-1.865412
oops! my bad, I meant 64GB, damn that sounds big. Well either way it's not so much about the space, it's more like PIMP THE HARDWARE!
@BFish
Nowhere in that article does it say that Nokia is going to cede control of high-end smartphone to Apple. Nokia's strategy has *always* been to drive down the cost of smartphones. The portfolio expands (a word used in the article) rather than shifts down the scale.
To be honest I prefer resistive screens. The stylus lets you jot down notes real quickly. Or even when I don't want to get that out I can use the tip of my nail, thus avoiding a greasy finger print (and it seems like a more natural posture anyways).
Yay-ness.
Now Nokia, can we have an overhauled UI for S60 instead of the standard software with a "touch pack" slapped on?
I want a stylus. I need a stylus.
I gave up on fingerpainting after kindergarten.
I stopped poking things with sticks when I left kindergarden
@BuddyBoy: So no procreation for you then.
Stylus is so 5 years ago.
@BuddyBoy
So, you never learned to write? As writing is poking paper with stick. :)
Its totally impossible that capacitive touchscreen goes into 5530 and "higher end" is 5900, right, Engadget?
To all capacitive touch screen lovers:
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/01/19/PH2007011901699.html
You know what happens to your touchscreens at this temperature? They stop operating.
Who said Nokia doesn't make you cool???
Yesterday, at the mall some dude's Nokia 5800 rang with a crisp, loud Nokia-star-trek ringtone ... All of a sudden all eyes at the counter turned towards this guy, He then brought what seemed to be a star-trek edition of the 5800 answered the call and played with the phone a lil bit... I was so fucking jealous, to add more pain to injury, couple of chicks approached this guy, probably to ask were he got the ringtone. Am sure he must have collected their digits... Then I said to myself... wait until my N97 comes home and you guys would see who's cool...
Wow... I'm glad my own self-worth isn't wrapped up in who sees my phone and who thinks my phone is cool and if it was used in the lates Hollywood blockbuster.
Who says they want to be a teenager again? Further proof that those really AREN'T the best years of your life
News like this from nokia makes me wanna rethink my plans on buying the omniaHD in the next month, Sure the samsung has won be over with it's sheer power over nokia thus my reason for buying it, but then again, this is my first venture into samsung, and to add to that, samsung has little to no record of firmware updating whilst we all know what nokia did to the n95, the 5800, and recently, the N79,N85 and the N96.
That said, I hope something so late in the year comes running symbian foundation software! I, for one, will only consider skipping the samsung, if they manage to make the UI as slick, and one-up the omnia with the spec sheet.I mean, this will be great, if it can match the samsung in computational power, the camera, the HD playback/recording, the kinetic scrolling from the N97, an OLED screen as big as the samsung along with the usual support from nokia with regards to firmware.
why can't they make touchscreens that are as responsive as capacitive screens and yet allow stylus precision?
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/02/19/stantums-mind-blowing-multitouch-interface-on-video/
I've been wanting a 3.5inch screen of this on a touch HD from the day it was announced. No one else seems interested though.
Ode to a Stylus:
My stylus makes me joyful,
I find it useful, too.
It doesn't give my fingerprints,
Or sweat the way I do.
It writes just like a pencil,
With sharp, unmuddied lines.
So I shall miss my stylus
In these sad, capacitive times.