All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
To Touch or Not To Touch - the Christmas 2009 edition
Published by Steve Litchfield at 16:51 UTC, December 1st 2009
Summary:
Returning to a familiar theme but with a new twist, I caught myself doing something rather silly and rather telling. Reprising the pros and cons of touchscreen phones in the face of almost universal acceptance, seemingly, it does rather seem as though a tipping point has been reached. Read on for my Dec 2009 thoughts on 'Touch vs non-Touch'...
Just to set this up, and not being ashamed of quoting from one of my own previous articles(!):
"The first touch-based PDAs appeared in the mid 1990s, with Palm's stylus-based PDAs, closely matched by Psion bringing in touch into their EPOC-powered palmtops and then Windows Mobile (nee Pocket PC) joining in the fun around the millennium. EPOC mainly evolved into Symbian OS, running the S60 and UIQ interfaces, with the former unashamedly button-driven and the latter unashamedly stylus-driven.
Despite the relative success of Palm's PDAs, I think it's fair to say that the reliance on using a two-handed, stylus-driven interface meant that none of these touch-screen devices really became totally mainstream, in the sense that you'd see your mum or brother or colleague using one with no encouragement from you.
And then the Apple iPhone came along. Its main innovation was that it dispensed with the conventional wisdom that touch meant a stylus and allowed the use of a (grubby, greasy, uneducated?) finger(!) instead as its main driving force. You still had to use two hands (most of the time) but at least one barrier to use was removed for the main in the street.
A secondary innovation was the capacitive technology, meaning that a touchscreen could, for the first time in years, actually be viewed in sunlight and was incredibly responsive to the slightest touch. Backed by a ground-up interface rethink and Apple's legendary 'cool', the iPhone became a deserved success."
With the result that most phone manufacturers have now jumped on the 'touch' bandwagon, trying to emulate the iPhone's success, or at least its mojo. Even Nokia now has touch as one of its cornerstone interface technologies, with the 5800 XpressMusic, the 5530, the N97, the N97 mini and now the X6 all sporting the fully touch-enabled S60 5th Edition.
The silly/telling moment came when I caught myself, for the umpteenth time, trying to tap the screen of a non-touch phone. Go on, you try it - use a device like the Nokia 5800 or iPhone for a few days and then go back to something like the Nokia N86 or E71. It's not a criticism of the latter's functionality, but I BET, I absolutely WAGER that at some point you'll see something on the screen and find yourself tapping it and wondering, just for a second, why nothing's happening!
The fact that such a glitch could happen is testament to the fact that, on the whole, touchscreens do allow for more intuitive, quicker to use interfaces. But let's just summarise some of the other implied pros and cons:
| Touchscreens on phones | |
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Pros Easier interface possible - what you see is what you can interact with Virtual controls can be removed for more screen real estate for content Large display helps visibility for those with less than perfect eyesight Gestures (swiping, encircling, flicking, multi-touch) allow for functionality that is harder or even impossible to implement with a button-driven system |
Cons Larger display makes device more fragile and vulnerable Touchscreen displays often (iPhone and G1-excepted) have poor contrast in bright outdoor light Text input is necessarily clumsier, although writing aids and haptic feedback can minimise the 'hit' Interface can be hard to use one-handed Interface can be hard to use while on buses or in a car due to vibration You can't operate a touchscreen device 'blind' in a pocket, or with your eyes closed at night (e.g. controlling music or podcasts without waking a partner) |
The number of 'cons' above should certainly give food for thought that touch isn't necessarily the best thing since sliced bread. And in fact previous editorials from me in other years have always come solidly down on the side of non-touch, i.e. qwerty and d-pad-driven devices. However, the 'Pros' above are becoming ever more convincing, with interfaces becoming more tractable (e.g. kinetic scrolling in all parts of the N97 and N97 mini) and, perhaps most of all, with displays getting ever larger (e.g. 3.5" screen on the N97 and 4"+ isn't uncommon on some non-Symbian devices) - squinting at a 2.4" display doesn't seem as practical as it once was, to me at least.
What has really tipped the balance for me is the new breed of 'full-face touch with full qwerty underneath' form factors. Of course, such a thing isn't really new - the Psion Series 5 had all this back in 1997. And the concept of a full qwerty keyboard that can be hidden away has been kept alive with the Nokia Communicator series over the years. But with the evolution of forms like the HTC Kaiser (/Tilt) and the take up in the Nokia world with the innovatively hinged Nokia N97 and N97 mini, the full-touch, full-qwerty design seems here to stay and, in some ways, offers the best of both worlds.
Yes, most of the familiar touchscreen 'cons' are still relevant, though arguably outweighed. But the biggie - text input - is now firmly addressed. And I'm not the only one to think that this form factor is becoming more and more useful - similar touch/qwerty hybrid designs are now appearing from all manufacturers and for all platforms (except iPhone).
Of course a Nokia N95 8GB or E71 is no less useful than it ever was, there are plenty of excellent examples of non-touch phones that continue to serve their owners well. But I'm arguing that, in the Symbian world, a tipping point has been reached. Which is why I've found myself recommending, for example, the likes of the Nokia N97 mini over the non-touch E75 or E90. And the 5800 XpressMusic over the similarly-sized N79.
Caveat: the tech world seems to move in cycles. PDAs/phones grow, and then they shrink, and then they grow again. Are we all getting caught up in fashion, I wonder? Will our portable brains shrink again in a few years time, perhaps down to wristwatch or lapel badge size? We're into science fiction at this point, but your comments most definitely welcome!
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 2 Dec 2009
Discussion
As for robustness, 4 colleagues of mine has iPhones with cracked screens! My E51 on the other hand has been dropped plenty of times (onto hard flooring no less) and is carried in a pocket full of change and keys, and is still going strong.
In any case, I like my buttons. Touchscreen has its uses, but I am fine without them.
PS: @aas: I recommend a shout out for the offscreen advent calendar available in ovi store, with one free offscreen application each day!
ILG
I like the flexibility of buttons, thats why I stick with my e72 for on the go mobility, calls and actual work. Then for fun and casual stuff, I got my N97 to back me up. All in all, it depends on preference and for me, its buttons all the way.
However some of the benefits of physical interface surely are going to be sorely missed by not necessarily the minority. Along the lines of the much delayed but not ambitious or advanced enough Modu I would be quite surprised not to see some sort of modular phone system evolve (I think Sharp were working on one) with components such as a tiny comms unit with with the GPS and small/minimal touch screen maybe in a watch form (for jeans pockets nights) and then unit with add on keyboards, one handed texting unit ,larger touchscreen, (large)r cam, game controller etc. Or even more distributed around the body as personal network - the infamous "intelligent-wear". Of course by then we could be seeing flexible screens and gesture control................:cool:
So I guess I like touch-screen phones overall but I won't use one if I have to sacrifice speed.
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With so few positives and so many negatives, we hope our list has convinced that being a multi-millionaire isn't all that's cracked up to be, and made you realise how lucky you are to be poor!
Prior to my experience with iphone. I did not care much about touchscreen but now is a different story. The iphone brings a completely new experience to it.
I have no qualm switching from a touch to non-touch. Having said that, I do have a problem when I use two different touchscreen phone like the iphone & the Satio. Immediately you would notice how laggy the Satio UI is & so much so that at times is a real frustration to use it. IMO, the iphone touchscreen is the most responsive UI I have ever used. The Symbian S60 touchscreen still have a long way to go. I am tempted to try the N97 Mini. Can everyone tell me more about the responsivness & speed of the Mini's UI? Surely, it has to be better than the Satio. Not only the UI is slow but the software is buggy as well. Well. my Satio is now in SE service centre waiting to be rectified.
I still maintain that the iphone is still a crap phone when it comes to functionality & practicality. It has too much constraint as a phone & even a S40 phone works better in that respect.
Several of the non-touch devices have repeated fingerprint marks on them. usually when i'm setting up a touch in one hand and a non-touch in the other. "why doesn't this screen work.....oh, duh!"
I think I'm kind of in the middle as far as touch vs non-touch. i can scoot round either quickly and easily. PROVIDED of course that the interface allows this. Some are easy, some are hard, touch/non-touch not withstanding.
But i lean more toward touch. For me its because i also lean toward having a larger screen. Like the PC World advert says "Media is my world", plus maps, and browsing. You can't have a screen that kind of size (3.5" and up) and a physical keyboard without making a big phone even bigger.
I've also got large fingers, so the E71's, Treo's, and Blackberry's are fiddly for me, i need a larger keyboard, physical or virtual. As i'm not enamoured by any of the physical large keyboard devices (the TP2 comes close though), i pick a virtual keyboard device.
I've only got one thing to point out and that is precision.
Using a D-pad is slightly more accurate in selecting things than touching it (Without a stylus).
At least that is the case when it comes to handsets made by Nokia.
Also in most occasions you have that the touch is (immediately) not recognized.
(This also is the case with the O' mighty iPhone, though I believe wiping the screen improve this).
There is in general a more "pause" before something gets done when using a touch screen as you need to wait milliseconds more.
The experience is not that smooth as when using physical buttons.
Really liked your point about controlling music, the same goes for texting messages on the go which can't be done without watching the screen on touch enabled handsets.
When it comes to form factors the N97 has the one suitable for me. A navigation button which I use frequently and a (half?) qwerty keyboard.
Bill
I suspect that touch is better suited to dedicated media players, but if you can shoehorn it onto a media-centric phone without making a disaster of early firmware releases... Ahem! SE...? Touch is not going away any time soon, I suspect the real question is about how many hands you need to hold your phone to use its basic functions.
But there is also a middle ground, like the N97, which has more bulk...
So why not have: E55 / E72 / E75 with a touch sensitive screen?
yes the screen is still 2.4", but add touch you've got got the direct quicker access if you want. Given S60v5 is optimized so you can still fully control the O/S via keypad + 2 soft keys on the screen, i can imagine having the next E75 having a touch sensitive screen.
Have the touch screen capacitive with glass up front and it'd be just as robust
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Originally Posted by BillF
Don't want to contradict Steve but, on the iPhone 3Gs, and I suspect many other touch devices, it is quite possible to control music, podcasts etc while in pocket by using voice commands and supplied headset with device. eg press and hold headset on microphone bulge until you hear double beep and say "play playlist Katie Melua", "shuffle", or even "Call Steve Litchfield" etc. If you have a podcast or music paused you can use the headset to unpause, jump to next track etc by clicking.
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