Thursday, October 28, 2010

Nokia 5800 full review -2nd of 4

S60's touch implementation is bound to be somewhat controversial because, rather than starting from a blank slate, its origins as a softkey driven UI are clearly evident. Whether you regard that as a benefit or not is open to debate; there are advantages: user familiarity and platform compatibility, and disadvantages: some legacy elements are not well-suited for touch. Furthermore, I do expect people to say that some things have not been done in the 'right way'; an example of this is the absence of finger flick scrolling in contacts (and other lists). In this particular instance, S60 provides adaptive search fields which are arguably more functional.

I think the area that will stir most debate is the use of a focus driven UI. On the 5800, this applies particularly to lists (as used in Contacts, Settings and many other applications). In practice this means that double taps are required to carry out certain actions: the first to select the focus of an item on a list and the second to trigger the default function for the item in focus (for example, in contacts you first tap to select a contact, and then tap again to open the contact).

This contrasts with other touch UIs, where a single tap is required (non-focus driven UI). The advantage of a focus driven UI is that it works across a greater range of devices (e.g. devices with a D-pad); the advantage of non-focus driven UIs is that they tend to be more intuitive for new users. Focus driven UIs tend to have more functions accessed from a menu ('Options' in the case of S60) rather than on screen and this, arguably, allows for richer functionality (but this is a complex area and much depends on the context).

focus

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