Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Adds a 'Human Interface' (NewsFactor)
Mark Long, newsfactor.com 1 hour, 12 minutes ago
Nokia has taken the wraps off a new smartphone powered by the latest version of the company's Symbian S60 operating system for mobile devices. By adding the benefits of touchscreen technology to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the company is taking the familiar and giving it a human touch, according to Nokia Senior Vice President Jo Harlow.
"As Nokia's first mass-market device with a touchscreen, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic turns a 'user interface' into a 'human interface' by truly putting people first," Harlow said. "For example, we've introduced the Nokia Contacts Bar, which is like a digital RSS feed on your life."
An Inside Look
The smartphone's Contacts Bar enables users to scroll through Web pages and interact directly with Web content at the touch of a finger, Harlow said.
"We have used touch technology where it really adds value such as the Contacts Bar, Media Bar, and clever shortcuts from the home screen to menu items such as calendar, profiles and clock," she explained. Users can highlight up to four favorite contacts "on their home screen and, through a single touch, track a digital history of recent text messages, e-mails, phone logs, photos and blog updates," Harlow added.
The Media Bar is a drop-down menu that provides users with direct access to multimedia content, including favorite music tracks, videos, photos and Flash-based Web content. The device supports the recording and playback of VGA-quality video at a full 30 frames per second.
The Nokia 5800, which is slated for worldwide release in current quarter, sports a 3.2-inch-wide screen featuring a cinematic 16-by-nine aspect ratio, a virtual Qwerty-style keyboard, 8GB of storage space, and support for tactile feedback. On the music front, the device is equipped with stereo speakers, a graphic equalizer, and support for all popular digital-music formats.
The Battles Ahead
The Nokia 5800 arrives at a critical time for the company, which is facing new challenges. During the second quarter, "Nokia faced increased competition in the consumer smartphone market, which had an impact on year-on-year performance" that only amounted to "about half of the market average," said Roberta Cozza, a principal analyst at Gartner.
Furthermore, the rising popularity of feature phones -- which adopt some, but not all, the characteristics of higher-priced smartphones -- "has created a battle at the high end of the market," said IDC analysts Ramon Llamas and Ryan Reith. The high-level operating system to be found in smartphones constitutes the main component that differentiates them from feature phones, the analysts said.
The problem for Nokia in the second quarter, explained Cozza, was that its Symbian platform saw its commanding share of the mobile OS market slide nine percent year over year as a result of "a more competitive and fragmented market." Nokia's latest Symbian S60 release is intended to help counter this downward trend.
In addition to its touchscreen interface, Symbian S60 Fifth Edition now includes a framework for advanced sensor technology that will enable developers to create intuitive applications and features.
"With this release we will see manufacturers create and extend their portfolio of products with new types of devices addressing a broader range of consumer needs," said Lee Williams, Nokia's senior vice president for S60 software.