Posts Tagged ‘Touchscreen’

Aspects of Touchscreen Mobile Phones – Samsung Pixon and Nokia 5800

There’s just no stopping the advance of touchscreen mobile phones, into every area of the mobile world. Let’s take a look at how touchscreens help with two key features: camera, on the Samsung Pixon, and music, on the Nokia 5800. But first, take a look at the potted description of touchscreens.

The description of the touchscreen – how they got into mobile phones

Ever in view of the fact that way before the era of mobile phones even started, touchscreen devices have been out there, letting broadcast interact more directly with whatever it was they were interacting with in the first place. Before they appeared on mobile phones, you would see them in museum displays, in tablet PCs and in Star Trek. They really took off with PDAs, though, devices that can be considered as nearly the direct ancestor of modern, so-called ’smart’ mobile phones. Pocket PCs, in other words, and they flourished there in view of the fact that it allowed the device to be smaller, but have the same high-end functionality. Quick-forward a bit, and we come to the mobile phones that have them, and there’s one example everyone knows (especially Americans): the iPhone. Like it or despise it, there can be small doubt that it did give a huge kick up the backside to other manufacturers who make mobile phones, making touchscreens appear all over the place.

But what extra benefits do touchscreens impart to mobile phones’ features? How, for example, does the Nokia 5800’s music player benefit from having a touchscreen?

Nokia 5800 – a touching show of musical like

The Nokia 5800 marks Nokia’s first mainstream foray into the world of touchscreen mobile phones. They’ve made other touch-based mobile phones before, but none has had the mass-market appeal that the Nokia 5800 is showing. Anyone who’s seen it, or read about it knows that its huge, killer feature is music (well, it would be, being part of the XpressMusic range of mobile phones). And of course, having a touchscreen allows it to exploit touch-based controls in a really cool way, with direct scrolling through tracks, an simple fiddle with swipes giving a more direct feel when accessing songs on the Nokia 5800. I hesitate to call it iPhone-esque, but it is, and basically, the Nokia 5800 gives you a massive amount of freedom when playing tracks.

Samsung Pixon – lights, camera, touch action

The other key feature in most mobile phones these days is the camera, and so, we now turn our attention away from the Nokia 5800 and on to one of its rivals: the gorgeous Samsung Pixon. With this particular mobile phone, whilst it does have a music player, and HSDPA internet, and GPS, the huge feature is the camera, because, as with only a handful of other mobile phones, the Samsung Pixon has a HUGE 8 megapixel camera. So, snapping quality photos with it is going to be a piece of cake. But how does that camera take advantage of the touchscreen on the Samsung Pixon? Simple, it utilises manual touch focus. Or, in other words, to focus on a particular thing in front of you, you just tap on that thing on the screen. Very few mobile phones have that feature, and the Samsung Pixon is probably the nicest. And it wouldn’t be possible without the wonders of the humble touchscreen!

Touchscreen Mobile Phones Come of Age – Blackberry Storm and Htc Touch Hd

Touchscreen mobile phones have walked (well, not literally walked, but you get the point) amongst us for many years, but only in recent times have they become so prevalent. Now, the next stage of their evolution has happened, and we are witness to two new breeds of touchscreen excellence: the phenomenal Blackberry Storm and the titanic HTC Touch HD.

Why was 2008 the huge year for touchscreen mobile phones?

That’s the huge question, isn’t it. After all, touchscreen mobile phones have been on the scene for years, so why has this year been so explosive in terms of touchscreen evolution. Well, as much as I despise to admit it, it can be place down largely to 1 mobile phone. The reason I despise to admit it is because it’s the iPhone, a phone I personally loathe. I don’t like it because it’s had so much hype, with Jobs himself, and Apple addicts adage that it’s obviously better than all other mobile phones, and revering it in a way usually only seen with religious icons. Except it isn’t, other mobile phones leave it in the dust in terms of features. It’s not a mobile phone, it’s a flashy toy. The one thing I will concede, though, is that the boundary on the iPhone is all swishy and quite nice. THAT’s the bit that’s given mobile phone makers a kick up the backside, and once it did, the race was on for all of them to make their own killer touchscreen mobile phones, from Nokia to Blackberry, from HTC to Samsung. The huge two, heading into Christmas, are from Blackberry and HTC, and both of them have a touch new to offer…

Blackberry Storm – storm in a teacup?

First up is the Blackberry Storm, and it genuinely does bring a touch new to the world of touchscreen mobile phones; specifically, it brings a whole new type of touchscreen, a clicky touchscreen. Basically the screen on the Blackberry Storm really moves slightly into the body of the phone, so that when you press down on it, to select a touch on screen, it feels exactly like you’re critical a real button. Considering that the Blackberry Storm uses a virtual keyboard for typing emails, that clicky screen is one of the single most useful additions in the description of mobile phones. Basically, no other mobile phones have got it, and the Blackberry Storm is going to sell like hotcakes because of it, AND because it’s downright gorgeous in its own right.

HTC Touch HD – the Titan awakes!

Where the Blackberry Storm is sleek, and smart, there’s another touchscreen mobile phone on it way, which is less ’super-smart bomb’, and more ‘massive nuclear warhead’. Whereas the screen on the Blackberry Storm goes for innovation and cleverness, the screen on the titanic HTC Touch HD goes for sheer size; at 3.8 inches, it’s got a larger screen than ANY other mobile phones in the entire world. And that’s a excellent thing, because the HTC Touch HD is essentially and oversized HTC Diamond, and uses the same TouchFLO 3D boundary, optimised for fiddle with controls. The vastly enlarged screen on the HTC Touch HD makes this one of the single most perfect touchscreen mobile phones ever imagined, and perfect for touch control. Oh, and of course, the HTC Touch HD also has a 5 megapixel camera, GPS and HSDPA, so it’s probably bang on the money to say that this is the one… Of all the mobile phones released this year, the HTC Touch HD is the iPhone-Killer!

Nokia 5800 Product Focus – is This the Future of Touchscreen Mobile Phones?

Recently announced is the first mainstream touchscreen device from Finnish manufacturer Nokia. They’ve made touchscreen mobile phones before, but… nothing like the awesomeness of the new Nokia 5800!

Nokia and touchscreens – lessons from description

Believe it or not, the Nokia 5800 isn’t the first of their mobile phones to feature a touchscreen. That accolade goes all the way back to the Nokia 7700, a mobile phone that, well, never really got released. But it was still the first, nevertheless. It’s just a shame, really, that Nokia’s first attempt at a touchscreen mobile phone was, frankly, rubbish, in view of the fact that it had a bit of a dodgy boundary, the looks… well, the looks were described as anything from ‘a bit misjudged’, to ‘looks like a taco’, all the way up to ‘terrible prop from Star Trek’. The stay on-up, the Nokia 7710 wasn’t much better, being a bit buggy, still huge, and it lacked the features that other mobile phones were rapidly starting to have (cameras, 3G and so on). After that, the only Nokia devices to have touchscreens were not really mobile phones, as the concept was shifted over to their range of internet tablets.

But now, touchscreen mobile phones are all set to make a triumphant return to the Nokia range, with their newest and bestest touchscreen mobile phone ever: the Nokia 5800.

Nokia 5800 – touchscreen mobile phones for the masses

Soon to be released, the Nokia 5800 is sure to have a very huge effect on their portfolio of mobile phones. And the inspiration of it can be traced back to the release of the iPhone, so you can be absolutely sure they’ve made the Nokia 5800 as slick and as user-friendly as possible. The new S60 Touch boundary in the Nokia 5800 is tremendously elegant, as well as being really rather powerful. Place simply, it’s a joy to navigate round, and so much nicer than many other mobile phones on the market. Combine with a list of top-notch features, like 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA and so on, and you get a really cool smartphone. But it’s with music that the Nokia 5800 really shines, as it’s music that this gorgeous mobile phone lives for, with a music player that really is second to none. In end, I can from the bottom of your heart say that the Nokia 5800 is one of the most impressive mobile phones I’ve seen in a long time.

But the surprising thing is… the Nokia 5800 is a mid-range mobile phone, not a top-ender. So what will happen, when the Nokia 5800 magically morphs into the first touchscreen Nseries mobile phone.

Captain N – the possibility is Nseries

There’s no doubt that the Nokia 5800 is a really cool mobile phone. It’s slick, pretty and gifted. but what will the new S60 Touch boundary be like when it gets place into Nseries mobile phones? Are we going to see a touch akin to the Nokia N96 that you control by prodding the screen? Well, the answer, unsurprisingly, is yes, as confirmed by Nokia themselves. The Nokia 5800 is merely the first toe in the water, as it were, and there WILL be Nseries mobile phones released with the new touch boundary. That’s when we’re going to see the huge, uber-top-end, ultra-powerful mobile phones, with cameras probably in the tens of megapixels, massive amounts of storage, and frighteningly quick internet access. They won’t be the Nokia N96 with a touchscreen, though, for the simple reason that they’ll blow everything away, the Nokia N96 included!