Video: S60 Touch UI Demo From MWC

Saara Bergström of the S60 marketing team has posted a couple of videos on her blog this morning. Of particular interest of course, is the short video shown above that features some of the first footage of a live S60 Touch UI demonstration. Recorded at Mobile World Congress, the demo takes place on an insignificant touchscreen display as Nokia cannot show the actual handset currently in development. The display is nice and big so we can get a good feel for the UI despite only being privy to a few areas. Some points of interest: Firstly, the app launch response time in the video is quite slow. Of course the new OS is not in its releasable state, but you would think Nokia could ensure that the device they used to demo the UI was able to handle its operation quickly and smoothly. This might lead us to believe that the new OS is resource-intensive and we can only hope the upcoming handsets being developed are powerful enough to accommodate it. The second item of note; the UI is… well… boring. Nokia is wise in their effort to maintain the overall look and feel of S60. This tactic will benefit both users as they transition to it, and developers as they begin to port their apps. The issue however, is that the UI is in desperate need of some modernization. What about transition animations and other forms of visual stimulation? We hope that Nokia surprises us down the road with a release candidate that has a few bells and whistles thrown into the mix. The last thing we’ll mention is that the UI looks nice and responsive to the touch. Again, this is an early build and it’s shown on a demo device but it seems to follow the finger quite well. From the footage it looks like it falls somewhere between the fluidity of Mobile OS X and the often misstep-afflicted Windows Mobile. It’s far too early to come to any conclusions but like it or not, this is the next generation of the world’s most popular smartphone OS so we had better get used to it.

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