Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Yeah, isn't it amazing how much UMPCs let us down?

I'm hoping there'll be some netbook-ification of the HTC Shift at some point. Cut some hw corners, put Ubuntu on it, something. It's my fave industrial design of the UMPCs, but for ~1400? No freakin' way.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

What the heck is a CD doing sticking out of that tablet? You realize that even with dual layer blu-ray you're only talking about 50GB, and you've gotta power the laser and a motor, right?

Even the N810, with the elegant craves1 hack, now has up to 32GB of relatively inexpensive removable storage on it, without the hassle of motors or lasers or anything.

If we're going retro, why not have a VHS tape pop out instead?

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

This d-pad thing is quite interesting to me. Probably the best touch mobile UI's right now in the market (or at least launched), the iPhone and the Palm Pre, neither has a d-pad in the device. ... Why would you really need the d-pad?

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I think Peter replied to this very well:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...6&postcount=44

The answers are all there. :) Nokia is a huge company. If Maemo would be Maemo Inc., a separate company with no other devices coming up, any plans for publicity might be different. It's a bit like Apple with the iPhone 2G and the iPhone 3G - once the public is told of the next version, many stop on their tracks and start waiting for it. Of course in this case the products that Maemo make are different than Symbian products, but still there are analogies.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

One more thing about community: many of active members are coming from open source crowd with its mantra "release early, release often". With long gap in releases - and even without any substantial info - we are losing interest.

From marketing point of view look for KDE4 - it was delayed for *2* years if I remember initial projects correctly. Plus for one year more it is barely usable for regular user (although 4.2 is really, really good). In total: 3 years behind the schedule. But with good campaign, blogs, screencasts really showing what is happening behind the curtains they managed to keep interest - even hype beyond common sense. Technical advantage? Well, everything I see today in mobile world looks like some variation of Plasma...

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Think WASD+mouse: two-handed control with e.g. scrolling, page-turning with d-pad; selecting, drawing with the touchscreen. Especially in Xournal.

Also as a gaming input. Using an accelerometer as a tilt joystick is the most natural replacement, but even that doesn't work so well when I'm lying on my side in a beanbag chair playing Tyrian, a use-case the d-pad was designed around.;)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Not having a d-pad on the RX-51 will be a big blow for me. :( Playing Quake 3 in bed with only a stylus and d-pad was high on my list of desired features.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

This is simple. Because of it's clear, fast & simple feedback, or in layman's terms - it clicks :) The d-pad may not be sexy, but it's really fast to use because it's located conveniently under the thumb (N800). It's easy and quick tool for navigating in menus. It also works well together with the touch screen, for example I might open a menu with right thumb, and then browse and select items with the d-pad.

The usability is emphasized when using the tablet on the move like walking. It's a lot easier to navigate with the d-pad, because I don't need two hands and I don't need to look where I touch and I don't need to verify visually on the screen that the touch is interpreted correctly.

Even though palm's latest doesn't have a d-pad, their earlier PDA line and OS made the usage of d-pad an art. You could do pretty much anything with it. The fact that the latest competitors don't have it doesn't mean that it's become obsolete. It just means that the UI people don't know how to utilise it. D-pads might also be seen as too old and boring technology for a hype product - a bit like our old fashioned keyboards, but they aren't going anywhere.

The way I see this is that the challenge for Nokia is to make a d-pad that is useable, but still sleek looking to please the modern consumers aesthetics. (For example the Motorola Razr's d-pad failed terribly on the usability part.)

For goodness sakes - you have d-pads on all your mobile phones as the main navigation tool. Do I really need to point this out?! :)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I've only started one thread here and it was all about this, and there were plenty explaining why they wanted a d - pad, and the consistent nokia answers that it was not needed in the next generation.

gaming, two handed operation, one handed operation!, but mostly OPTIONS - it gives more choice on how to use and set up your own tablet, but the nokia side seemed to be all about the fact that it made the software proramming more difficult because it had to take into account GIVING people more options.

The overall outcome of the thread was that nokia had fallen for the iphone design and it was a done deal. I would have thought the actual question that should be above is not "why would you need one" but "if you don't need one why are you here instead of off playing with your iphones?"

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

look at the n97... it have a d-pad.. why the n900 shouldn't have a d-pad, too??

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Best as in "usable" or "pretty"?

Text editing, command line, item list scrolling/selection, moving focus across frames in modest, rss reader etc. If you are planning to remove the d-pad at least put arrow keys on the virtual and hardware keyboards.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

This topic is too interesting for this thread. Moved to

The cohesive community: from talking to doing

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Skype is a proprietary lock-in, and overpriced. Get real SIP support instead. It allows you to pick your client instead, and its much cheaper than Skype.

If you insist, Skype works on J2ME.

When you say iPhone-like you really say you want the UI to work more intuitive. See for (fictional) examples http://tabletui.wordpress.com

Some (rather basic or useful) things you cannot do with KDE4 while they're possible with KDE3. Some people who are used to these things in KDE3 miss them in KDE4. Which one is better is a lot of plus and minus and weighting. This is pretty normal: every advantage has its other side. A knife has 2 sides; not 1.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

But... I guess the problem might not be self-evident for somebody who has not done designs on this area, but what exactly would you control with the d-pad?

You're talking for instance about navigating in menus. That assumes that there is a focus element on screen. Look at the iPhone UI, for instance. There is no focus element there. For a proper touch UI, you shouldn't have a focus element.

A traditional UI style is to have focus elements and then means to move this focus element around; first click to move the focus to position on screen, second click to confirm. Another style is to have no focus on lists and menus: first click always selects whatever you click. But you can't really mix these styles together very well. The current S60 touch UI does this, and I'm not sure that people are very pleased with the results. (Blackberry Storm tries to do this half-child of pressing lightly focusing and pressing heavily activating, but that's slightly hackish.)

There are major implications to whether you have an UI that supports a focus element or then not. Take an example... for instance, of a file manager style application: content list on screen, toolbar on screen. If you have a focus, you can click on an element and then choose a command from the toolbar. If you have no focus, then you cannot do UI's like that, but must set the commands differently. Or take another example from the S60 UI designs. They have the Options menu for commands for the focused item. It's essentially the same as the toolbar: the first click cannot activate an item, because the user must be able to click once to select item, then press Options to get commands for the focused item. It makes good sense for HW keys, but not really for touch screens.

The more you try to stick on to hard key based navigation, the less you can optimize for touch UI's. It's really that simple, fortunately or unfortunately.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Actually, if you look at the picture closer, the tablet is sitting ON TOP of the CD, as the cd is just there for a size reference. And if that's a size reference, that's going to be one seriously huge tablet. In fact, it's twice the size of the n8xx series in width, and nearly 3x in length. Which means it falls into the UMPC tablet arena, as the n8xx series is only 2.5" wide, and 5" long.

Oddly enough though, despite it's size, I'd still buy it. :) Assuming of course it runs Linux obviously. ;)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Окаy, imagine a textarea or an input in the browser. Do you click every time with your finger in the place you want to write? Now imagine a game - are you sure you will enjoy a fast paced action if half of the visible screen is under your controlling fingers?

There are some things a touchscreen is not suited for.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

For 1) no, other means can be done. iPhone does it one way (with their zoom loupe), but other means can be used, either on-sceren or off-screen, depending on if there are hardware keys or not.

2) Well, touch screens work well with games suitable for touch screens. Just like you wouldn't enjoy Civilization with only HW keys (well, some do!), you wouldn't probably enjoy Quake with only the touch screen.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

a touch screen and accelerometer (if device includes everything from rx-51) allows interaction in a different way to old mouse+keyboard indirect interfacing.

I'm not gonna be so worried if we have no dpad on the [***front of the] next device, the menu and desktop ui wont need it and im sure that the accelerometer can be made to control things like doom in a new and better way than ever before.

its just different, not worse.


***i expect a hardware keyboard though and this still needs dpad (ala n97)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Thanks for the clarification. When I wrote the previous message and thought about how to generalise where the d-pad shines, it came down to navigating in a grid like structure. If we take that away, then I guess the usefulness of a d-pad does indeed diminish.

Still, the hard keys are a great tool when using the device on the go, so I hope they're not abandoned altogether even if the d-pad has to go.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I think you get the point from the other responses, but I'll pile on just because.

I read the screen and I tap the screen, I don't touch the screen. I occasionally use my left thumb nail and I occasionally use my right index nail. And if the microb menu and toolbar were better designed I probably wouldn't have to use any nail.

With the n800 in my left hand (right hand holding, say, a cup of coffee) I can control everything with my thumb and index finger without obscuring/smudging the screen. An iPhone, Palm Pre or [insert other sh*tty device here] takes 2 hands or the screen is thumb-obscured. Just plain dumb. Thus, made for sheep.

And an accelerometer for use in video games on this platform? I have an iron constitution but this would even give me motion sickness. While I'm Sitting Down! Currently, this is my favorite example of technology abuse. Can you imagine watching an F1 race with your 50" plasma tilting back and forth?

Voice recognition isn't an option either. I read in silence; my own included. That's why I own this ARM device. In fact, I might just be one rev C away from buying a Beagle Board so I can start replacing all my x86 computers. Silence, for me, is platinum.

Bring back the n800 control layout or design something better, but please don't make me touch the screen. Pretty please with sugar on top.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Oh yeah, and even Apple added hardware volume controls in their iPod Touch refresh for the added speaker (internal, huh?). Please don't tell me the n900 won't have stereo speakers.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Yep I love the pinprick-metal style.

In 1969 I bought my first transistor radio - a tiny Sony radio with a front panel just like that of the N800.

That style died out when it was replaced by cheaper plastic, which is why it looks classy on the N800.

Roger.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I was completely with you until that last statement ragnar.

The question is, why not?

Why can't there be contextual info that determines whether the UI is presently modal or non-modal? Why can't I have a pure touch experience (ie, no focus elements) for the most part but then a change to a modal/focus approach when a specific app or usage demands it?

As a huge proponent of contextual UIs I'm discouraged by the Maemo OS retreat from certain aspects (such as abandonment of the finger-vs-stylus detection). In fact I'm convinced that, more than any other input experience, touchscreens MUST make high use of contextual elements.

So... why not?

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Thank you for your good and persuasive comments. But they imply that the case for a D-pad is entirely its use as a focus element in UI or navigation. The D-pad can be used for a variety of functions, some as simple as vertical scrolling and some of which have yet to be conceived, but not available if it is absent from the device. It also seems inconsistent with the open nature of the device and the years of engaging an open source community to remove the existing HW keys that have been present for years over the objection of the open source community.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

SD69, I wish I could make my thanks to your post above bigger and more powerful. :D

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Nah, you're pnot taking into account a number of usages you're so accustomed with that you'll know they're missing when they're actually gone. I meant d-pad for navigating INSIDE the input field. I don't want to delete 5 letters to type 6, right? How will the iPhone zoom loupe help me with that?

And you probably mean that we should only play strategies from now on on the next devices. Quake is not suitable for touch screen, refer to Tomb Raider for WM5 devices and they actually using some keys too :).

Does someone remember the user interface form Steven Spielberg's Special Report? I can tell you why it won't be used much in this form - it will give you an instant arthritis if you try to actually use it for something else than moving pictures around... :)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Well, this is discussed before, but there are basically 2 options to fullfill both modes:

1) Hardware/software button to switch modus.
2) Detection.

Because all kind of things from menus to user input depend on size, and size is everything on a small screen. Either way, I'td require hacks in e.g. GTK too.

Option 2 is probably very difficult. Either way, it is probably expensive to implement this because both modus operandi have to be tested well.

The advantages boil down to if you make things stylus friendly you can give the user more space. Touch (finger) friendly leaves less space. Touch/finger is easier for sudden, short usage because you don't have to take out the stylus. A stylus allows more precision.

The competitors market seems to bet & serve the touch/finger market, and Nokia is following this trend.

Because of the disadvantages of finger touch only you have to fall back to clever tricks in the touch UI. And, these exist. I've read several sound ones on http://tabletui.wordpress.com

Something like multitouch does not necessarily require 2 hands, btw. Just 2 fingers.

In some situations I've even used my nose. Picking out stylus was not an option. And I don't see one doing it with pleasure during sports either. So this, together with HS*PA, makes the device more a mobile outdoor device. And that is for sure closer to what I want than the current N8x0, but opinions differ.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Games? What is wrong with asdw (except that it destroys these keys earlier)? Nothing (all FPS games, requiring speed, use these and there are keybinds near these keys as well), except when you dont have a hardware keyboard (N800, 770). The software keyboards in existence are all pretty shitty IMO but given the popularity of N800 I must be wrong on that one.

Pandora comes with 2 of these dpads (no clue why... must have some reason...), and Pandora is aimed for this purpose of gaming, so perhaps a device such as a Pandora is better suited for those who deeply care about games. Maybe I like the N810 hardware keyboard because previously I used mostly phones and Sharp Zaurus. Both an even worse keyboard...

Also, remember that scrolling currently sucks compared to other devices. If you take Fennec into account, you don't have to use the dpad there. You use your fingers to navigate through the application. The only reason you'd need your keyboard is to become Sir TypeALot. They do their best to limit your required keyboard usage to minimum.

[EDIT], I will give example: take the RSS Feed Applet. You either have it small and informative with lots of items (a lot information, stylus friendly, finger unfriendly), you have it with big buttons and you must scroll up and down using the buttons (far less informative, finger friendly, not optimized for stylus but works). Autoscroll is resource hog.

Now, imagine you can scroll down in this by using a gesture instead of the buttons. Imagine you point on an item and it will show you the summary (full screen, or overlapping area; given my attention span I say full screen :p). Then you get 2 options: 'X' (close) or 'OK' (more information). While this does not make the application as informative as it standing, doing nothing, showing you the RSS items it does make it better while using it (IOW, outdoors). Indoors you can have your tablet standing doing nothing and being a monitor, sure. And, with some intelligent tagging, filtering, and feed browsing (this, given complexity, more for 'later' versions I suppose!) it could become a killer application.[/EDIT]

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I think that this would be a great way to create the UI because it would at the same time allow for
-great touch UI built by Nokia AND
-continued easy porting of open source software

I fear that if the focus elements are removed from UI, it will make porting applications that rely on them difficult. Of course I'm not a developer so this might not actually be a problem.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I guess we mean different things by "contextual" (and it looks like certainly we mean different by modal vs. non-modal! :)). I'm cautiously optimistic towards using contextual awareness and information in the UI. By I think contextual in terms of the functionalities that the device offers to the user, not so much in terms of the UI style in which these functionalities are offered.

For what it it worth, I was basically the inventor behind the finger vs. stylus feature (there's a patent for that on my name, so I guess it's public information), so I do share some pain behind in dropping it. :) But not very much, ultimately.

I gave some examples in my previous entry why it is hard to combine a focus-less and a focus style.

Perhaps you could do it by doing two UI's for an application, one where the flow is optimized for touch, and another based on the idea of focus + commands within the same view, and then switch between these two sensibly (somehow, it's certainly not trivial). And hope that the users wouldn't get confused over some functionality in the application being presented in two really different styles all the time.

Even if that would make sense, it is doing the UI layer twice for all applications, and that's massive work. It's not optimal to use the same flows for both of them, doing that would make the end result poorer than not doing anything at all.

Some specific applications might benefit more from this switch that others. Say something like the browser, many current browsers can switch to this HW key focus moving mode even though they don't show focus by default. But ultimately these are usually exceptions. Considering for instance the iPhone, one can argue that most of the applications in there would really not benefit from adding the HW rocker key to the device. And requiring HW keys on the device basically means that the keys should make sense, "should do something" in all the applications.

(This, as I've talked before, is not to say that HW keys cannot be in the device, but the rule is "support if they are presented, but do not assume that they are there".)

In theory nothing is impossible, but basically the effort taken would be huge, and maintainability and scalability would be hard. ... It's a race. Going through all the cliches like "time is money", "nothing is free" etc., it's better to do one great UI than try to do two good UI's.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

For text input there are multiple strategies, depending on whether a device has a hardware qwerty keyboard or not, and if such device has cursor keys on the keyboard or not. If there is a HW qwerty keyboard with cursor keys on the keyboard, problem solved. If there is a HW qwerty with no separate cursor keys, then you can for instance temporarily embed and display cursor keys (or a similar mechanism) on screen whilst the user is typing on a text field. If no HW qwerty, you can do the same kind of embedding (or similar mechanism).

For gaming I don't really see the issue. It's impossible to say that all games would be perfect on any device. Depending on what the configuration of a device is like, there are games that are more suitable and some that are less suitable. People pick and developers hopely develop games that suit a device well.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Bad generalization #2754:

This is all Nokia's fault. What I'm noticing here is that all the n810 users that never owned a 770 or n800 don't know what it's like to have the d-pad on the outside. Of course they want touch screen crap; they're deprived. Shame on you Nokia. You've splintered the community. Now make it all better. I'll give you till June. Maybe July. :)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

To take a stupid analogy, if you have a hammer, you will find plenty of things that look like nails. If you bolt a hammer on the side of the device, you would get frustrated if there wouldn't be nails to hit.

Then again, I'm arguing here in generalities. The N810 has no D-pad on the front cover. Any future device might or might not have such a key. :)

For instance the Palm Pre skips the D-pad with a separate touch scrolling and gesture area, giving capabilities like page up/down, launching new items etc. All very nice. The touch pad a nice idea because if there is nothing else for it to do, it does (afaik) exactly the same thing as another parts of the touch screen. Meaning that there are no extra functions the designers have to invent just for functions sake.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

ragnar, you're working awfully hard to argue against something that many users highly desire. Why?

(note: I am on record here as saying I didn't see relocation of the d-pad on the N810 as a showstopper)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

... and this example shows how much easier scrolling is with a d-pad when implemented properly. (especially when you take into account that scrolling with d-pad can be done one-handed, while i never got anything touch-related to work without using a second hand.)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

To me one of the strongest arguments against 100% touch is the reduced lifespan of the overall product. With even normal usage, (at least parts of) the touchscreen will wear out long before the device in toto ceases to be useful.

So IMO the inclusion of some sort of additional hardware input device, regardless of form, is important-- and its open configurability paramount.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I think there are plenty of present and future uses for the D-pad if it is present.

In addition to the demonstrated Palm Pre, there is already a MID shipping with a separate gesture area for zooming. If replacing the D-pad with an improved off-screen HW element, it should at least be equivalent functionally and appear exactly the same way in the SW stack for at least apps developers. When we talk about about a HW "key", I think we are referring to an offscreen HW element manipulatable with one finger without covering up the display. For example, you referred to the Apple UI, but zooming is carried out by multi-touch of the display itself. I do prefer the Palm Pre to that.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I would argue that the vast majority of the users do not really desire the D-pad (the sample size and correlation to a typical user in here isn't exactly optimal), providing they get an UI that is well optimized for touch. And that having to support the D-pad would make reaching that goal much harder.

That's basically why I'm arguing. Having it is not a free lunch. It may seem like it now, but that's only because of the current UI. It's not about just desiging a good HW design for one - or why not go the Pandora-route and two - d-pads. Requiring it makes things worse in many aspects.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

I would consider the device broken if the touch screen stops working. It's not like the space shuttle where you should have backup systems for everything if one system stops working. ;)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation
 

Here here!