Assuming that sooner or later Maemo will live in phones rather than "tablets"... and knowing that I peronally think touchscreens are unacceptable in phones... I'll have to keep using S60 phones and just be happy Maemo exists, although it'll no longer be part of my gadget-life.

Or, wait a minute - how about a non-touchscreen device based on something they'd call "almost Maemo"? How easy/difficult would it be to re-use the software underneath the UI for a conventional phone and what exactly is it that would have to be changed?

Help me think about it:
If such a device had a dpad as a pointing device and some extra buttons like current S60 devices have, what would they need to change in order to get Maemo running?
Isn't it just a matter of adapting the HIG for even smaller screens? And maybe replacing Hildon (adapting Qt) by a layer that, say, maps buttons to hardware keys and makes sure applications cannot offer 15 buttons when only 2 hardware keys are available?

Sure such a system would most likely exist in addition to Maemo, not running Maemo software that's designed for touchscreens. But still, it would share a lot of the underlying technical concepts.

What am I missing?
Would it be possible without touching Maemo's non-UI components?

Why?

Yeah I guess it is possible, by using a trackball instead of a touchscreen, because right now the touchscreen is basically emulating a mouse + pressure sensitivity.

This is what the G1 does. Honestly, the trackball is a poor substitue for the touch screen. I don't use the trackball very often. I rather touch the screen.

Sorry, I should have been more specific... Especially about the "why", because then it would be clear why a trackball for example wouldn't do.

One thumb use
A mobile device I want to operate with one thumb: holding it in one hand and using the thumb for everything. Now I don't want to give unnecessary details about the lengths of my body parts in this forum, but let me just say that I can comfortably move my thumb around an area of roughly 1.6"x1.6" (or 4x4cm). On a touchscreen device, this would mean a 2.2" screen that'll always be covered by my thumb.
(Go and watch people who use touchscreen phones, no matter which brand: They'll always hold it in one hand and tap on it with the other hand. That's a compromise I'll take for a portable device such as the tablet, but not for a phone that's supposed to be made for mobile use.)

Tactile feedback
I need to be able to operate the device without looking at it. It's a mobile device, so I do things with it while I walk, while I talk to somebody, etc.
With hardware buttons, I'm always certain what to do: One to the left, one down, press. Center, press. Quick look at the display, one up, press. You cannot do this with a touch screen.

Focus-driven UI
There's probably a better way to say this in English; what I want is that elements of the UI receive focus by clicking through them on a d-pad, the way in works on all cell phones I know, the way the "tab"-key works on a desktop GUI. This way, I needn't move a pointer across the display and hope I'll eventually hit the correct target (the way I do on a laptop with a trackball or a pad). Whatever can be activated/pressed will receive focus by pressing up/down/left/right on the d-pad. Only this way I'll be able to move through the whole GUI without looking at it, simply counting the number of clicks.

I'm fully aware that this will not cover all use cases a touchscreen (or even a trackball-driven pointer) would cover. You can't paint with a D-pad, can you? You cannot drag and drop with this method. (Well, you could, but a UI optimized for all this better not support drag and drop in the first place.) Still, it does what I need in a mobile phone so much better than a touch screen that I'm willing to accept these few drawback. (And I'm not an artist, anyway.)



I hope this explains better what I'd need, why I need it... And what would have to be changed in the UI to make using such a device a nice experience. (You wouldn't want to have dialogs, for example, with a lot of elements. That would make navigating through them with the d-pad annoying. It would be a lot like S60, in fact...)

I'm still not sure if it could be done technically. Could it work with the current GTK/Hildon framework with only minimal changes and a new HIG? Would be need to replace Hildon? Is it completly impossible with GTK? Is there something underneath the UI in Maemo that's so hardwired to the concept of a touchscreen device that it would take more than a change in the UI-parts to get this running? ...?

Or then just buy a Symbian device, like the E72?

It already pretty much offers you everything you want in that regard.

@ragnar:

Yes, UI-wise, S60 is pretty much what I want already. As I said, I'll keep using it.

I'd just prefer to have a GNU/Linux-like OS underneath the pretty icons. With Symbian, I'm a dumb user who has to trust a GUI. With Maemo, I could really own my device.

Anyway, I don't expect this to happen as long as the current touchscreen-craze lasts. I was more interested in the technical aspects of would it be possible and how much effort would it be.

Those people must be kids with short fingers. I can and do use my touch screen phone with one hand easily. The thumb can comfortably reach every corner on the screen. In the end it depends on the phone. This puts a limitation on the screen size of the phone, of course. The N900's screen will be too large then...

I fully agree. This can't be done with a touch screen (yet).

the N97 has a 3.5in screen, with my hands (long fingers, can palm a regulation basketball) I can touch the screen easily. Larger than that (say 4in or 4.5) and that would be hard to do.

Has the new Maemo 5 UI taken into account being a focus-driven episode? That would be a good question to ask any who are working on that aspect of things now. Though, it would probably not be a problem to add that to the UI once the finger-based UI is mostly optimized. It would make some of those who'd like to use their mice or keyboard to navigate the UI a bit happier as well as they'd gain some refined attention to that aspect of things.

Saying you need a phone without a touch screen and with regular buttons, I'm surprised you're not a believer of the 'a phone is a phone' way of thinking. Having Maemo on a small, non-touch QVGA display would destroy everything that makes it what it is. Apps will have to be radically redesigned, in such a way that they may as well be on a different OS with a bigger existing user base AND optimised solely for the mobile purpose. It's like having XP or Ubuntu on your phone, both fantastic and loved systems, but completely impractical for small mobile purposes, as their main methods of both display and interface are gone completely. I think if Maemo becomes the new touchscreen Nokia standard, S60 should die a death and S40 should become the regular Nokia standard.

Also, going back to what you were saying about two handed touch screen use, as much as I hate the utterly wasted UI of my Samsung Tocco, I can only really use it with one hand. On a 2.8" display, it's practically all obscured with another hand.

If the presentation layer is so tied to the functionality, then the OS wasn't designed well