Nokia announced it was adding touch screen support to its S60 smartphone

Tag : nokia
Code-named Tube, the mobile handset should officially be named the5800 XpressMusic, according to Internet rumor mill. In addition totouch input through a hi-res (640 x 360-pixel), 3.2-inch display,the music smartphone is said to include the following features: aquad-band GSM radio, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, A-GPS, a 3.2megapixel camera with flash, a TV-Out port, an industry-standard3.5mm headset jack, 150MB of storage, and a microSDH slot with an8GB card bundled in the box.
Last fall, Nokia announced it was adding touch screen support toits S60 smartphone platform, which runs on top of the Symbian OS.Nokia, which already owned 48 percent of Symbian Limited, acquired the remaining shares of the company in June.
It then turned around and created the open source SymbianFoundation, replacing licensing fees with a royalty-free licensefor all Foundation members. This is widely viewed as Nokia responseto Googles Android platform and the Open Handset Alliance.
In addition to touch, the upcoming S60 interface, which the 5800XpressMusic presumably runs on, adds support for Haptic or tactilefeedback, where users feel a physical pulse when tapping a display.Perfect for a touch screen display - a la the upcoming BlackBerryStorm.
Additional enhancements include motion, proximity (like the iPhone)and light sensors, as well as full integration of Adobe's FlashLite in its web browser. Flash Lite integration, which isn'tavailable in any way shape or form for the iPhone yet, shouldenable them to view Flash-enabled Web sites containing animationand videos (YouTube, for example) just as they would on theirdesktops.
Thanks to the success of the iPhone, advanced touch screen phonesis one of the hottest categories in mobile handsets. A number ofhandset vendors, with the notable exception of Nokia, have releasedtheir variations on this phenomenon.
There's Samsung, which has done well with the Instinct ( see our review ) over at Sprint, LG with the Prada at Verizon, and the various HTCTouch models , which are just about everywhere, for example. It's time for Nokiato join the fray with the 5800 XpressMusic.
"The phone is extremely important," explained Gartner analystCarolina Milanesi to Reuters . "We have been waiting for the market leader to respond to Apple'siPhone for a year and a half now. There is a lot of pressure onNokia."
[via engadget ]