I don't need an article to convince me that the stylus isn't dead. Forget about what developpers want, we're talking about the general public. Capacitive screens are the future and you don't need to bring up specific reasons why the stylus is still usefull because I'll bring up 20 to prove that it's more of a nuissance.

Thanks guys, shame I didn't ask before I bought this s***.

Going back to the subject.
From my short experience playing with N900 screen.
3 months ago operating on iPhone screen was pleasure for me (usually in Apple store ) but after I get N900 I had a funny situation.
My friend visited me week ago with his IPhone. Asked me to type in some details using VKB. I couldn't. He was looking at me like at stranger from different planet. But I was sitting in a bit inconvenient position and I couldn't pres a button! I felt strange myself. My first impression was like, he has locked keyboard or something.

So I figured out why. N900 learned me how precise can be and very often when I am to lazy to use stylus I am using my nails. As smoku pointed this out for dragging items it's just natural reaction lifting my finger now to horizontal position.

Another one situation, my another one colleague with N95 (no experience with touch screen) couldn't touch any button on my N900.

Of course in both examples I am talking about first impressions and attempts to try. So to addition to technology there is also aspect of who get use to which solution I think. If you are iPhone user your 1st impression can push you back but don't be surprised that it work other way around as well. For me precision matter. How could I play with OpenTTD on iPhone? I have no idea is any brave man to port this kind of game to iPhone

Very often here you argue that this type of screen can be useful only for 3 things: hand writing, drawing and manipulating small items. I would like to highlight here something.

Small items... we already talking about ENTIRE web. This content nobody will redevelop for you because of iPhone.
For N900 doesn't need to.

You can say but I can zoom in. Sure you can, I don't have to

I guess about 1000000000 chinese would disagree with you, if they ever want to write anything with their mobile device.

Did you actually buy an n900? If so, you're probably in the top 5 worst consumers to ever visit this site.

@devu: on small items, particularly full-sized web pages, I would say the main difference is mobility. For a mobile device, it's only natural to have many use cases where the user is not confined to standing still or sitting down.

For the effort and time that you spend manipulating the stylus (with both hands tied to this process) and trying to click something that I assume is on the edge/outside of the normal ergonomic envelope on a 3.5" screen; a finger-friendly interface can accomplish the same with one hand and an additional click or two.
ie: on the iphone, you double tap on the areas that you need to zoom in and you can click on the intended button; all under 1s. all this can be done while your other hand is preoccupied with something else and the user not having to stop or sit down....

Here, you can also double tap to do the same thing. I can't see the lack of this functionality while I'm on the way but still I can use my nail to determine better precision. Maemo Interface itself doesn't force me to use stylus at all. But when I will sit down waiting for my plain in comfy chair I can enjoy better precision.

I don't really understand pointing out the GUI design regarding to the screen technology. I believe designers did the best for each. Capacitive screen is trendy only because of iPhone. From GUI designer and developer point of view has more restriction and limitation. It's impossible to develop more sophisticated GUI for strategy games for example when you have a lot of options and windows.

Typical GUI designer looking at limitations of the technology and saying.. Ok let's see what we can do on 3,5 inch screen when finger is a pattern. Not to much really. And believe me I know what I am taking about. I am facing this dilemma now during my work on cross platform WebOS. Trying to do finger friendly navigation for devices without stylus in mind anyway. More I am thinking and solving issues related to this I see the bigger advantage of having stylus jut in case.

As GUI designer I also have to say, Maemo GUI designers are did amazing job here. I understand that portrait mode is something missing for many people. But this can be done by software implementation. But the way how whole GUI functioning was dictated to technical aspects of this platform and its clear if you are stop for a while and ask yourself why, or did you could develop this better way? If so, how.. oh no, because that solution could cause that problem and so on, all will be clear.

I'm not saying that iPhone GUI has been designed bad way. No!
It' good for this technology for sure. but as for GUI designer N900 has less limitations so... more possibilities. Is it not good reason enough?

We developped a very nice solution for Opera Mobile and Mini UI.
If you tap a webpage and your "tap area" hits several links, you are presented with a menu asking which link you wanted to activate.

Because overlap and concavity don't exist, the simple "nearest object center" policy used in virtual keyboards is all that's needed. When object dimensions aren't very uniform, some simple edge heuristics can be applied to penalize wide/tall objects, and reward thin/short objects. The dark classic theme of this site is a good example: Very small image links right next to large text links. Zooming and popups wouldn't be necessary, and users would quickly be trained to aim for the center of all links.

"This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

Motorola MT810 Ophone to sport both capacitive and resistive digitizers, makes TV cameo

I can't tell from the pictures if it has a stylus holder.

On a related note (not deserving a thread on its own), "the iPad has just gotten a little more magical."

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/09/m...ursory-cursor/

A mouse is no stylus, but an improvement nonetheless...