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The Game of Touch-Enabled Mobiles Just Got Another Player

This time it's the 800-pound gorilla, Nokia. Today at the Symbian smartphone show in London, Nokia showed off the latest updates to its S60 smartphone operating system. Among the new features is--you guessed it--support for touch screen user interfaces. But that's not all.

This would be Nokia officially tossing its gauntlet into the ring. Sure, it mentioned several months ago that it would likely be pursuing touch screen-enabled devices, and even briefly flashed a prototype Nokia-branded iPhone clone during a conference back in August. But now it is official. Nokia is wading into the touch screen battle. Not that it has much choice.

Palm devices and Windows Mobile devices have had touch screen capabilities for years. Nokia's S60 has actually lagged behind in this respect. With the iPhone really stepping up the pressure of touch screen devices, this is more Nokia playing catch up than setting any new trends.

According to Nokia, existing S60 3rd Edition applications will run on touch-enabled devices unmodified. Tools will be made available for developers to further optimize the touch experience of their applications.

Furthermore, S60 will support more advanced sensors, such as motion or orientation. This could allow for applications to be developed that use the sensors for input, such as for reorienting a screen based on the way the phone is being held. The iPhone does this with the browser and iPod applications.

Lastly, the S60 updates will power full video over the mobile Web. Nokia is incorporating Flash Video into the S60 Web browser. This will really enrich the mobile Web browsing experience.

The new platform will be ready for developers in 2008.

So now that Nokia is in the ring with a host of other smartphone makers, the question is, will devices really get any better just because they are touch-enabled?

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