Following on from my own video rant, Ewan weighs in with his own balanced opinion of touchscreens on smartphones, arguing that, despite their limitations, they enable greater functionality and complexity.
Read on in the full article.
Touchscreens? The debate continues...
Sure touchscreens are not better than every other input device, in every way - i.e. there are good arguments for other devices in certain situations - e.g. keys give tactile feedback when doing lots of typing.
However if we now take the IPhone user interface as raising the bar, and being the new base standard for touchscreen functionality (in the same sense that successive releases of Windows have a minimum spec, I think we should apply this to what we want from a touchscreen), then touchscreens are a GREAT, even HUGE enhancement to the intuitiveness and ease of use of a device and it's services. They go especially well in conjunction with other sensible design decisions, such as the standards based javascript widgets that comprise the IPhone's user interface.
I am not trying to be an Apple fanboy here, but the IPhone though not having a perfect UI, just has a really beautiful piece of integrated design that is well thought out and intuitive and we should admit that, and competitors should aim for that. All designs should aim for the ideal, and should not be different just for the sake of it.
I think the mutitouch demos from Jeff Han (Google for them if you haven't seen) show what we should be aiming for.
In the same way that TV didn't replace radio, the argument does not need to be touchscreen vs other input devices. Lets have touchscreens too.
In any case this discussion is slightly futile as other manufacturers WILL be copying and improving upon Apple's designs and you'll get a touchscreen whether you like it or not 😊
Alex
phonething.com
Whilst the iPhone's touch screen and menu is quite impressive, and no doubt manufactuer will make them and consumers will buy them, but i do still have my doubts.
Operating one hand will probably be more difficult, like Steve suggested, but one bigger issue for me is that to use a touchscreen you'll need to have your eyes fixated on the screen to operate it properly. You can't just feel the keys and click around if you remember the keys to certain functions.
I think that the perfect solution is something like P990i but thinner obviously. It offers the best of both world. With the flip closed, you can use the keys and navigation button to use most functions normally, but with flip open and using the touch screen, it opens up more options then a strictly key based phone can offer
Let's not label Apple's interface as the de facto standard before we see it 😊 because although it has multi touch it is very very simialr to the old Newton Interface. I#ve actually had Jeff Hannn demo multitouch to me on a 40inch Windows XP monitor and it is lush, - how that transfers to a mobile device (and how 'robust' that screen is is my chief worry.
The argument here (and it is a bit scrappy) is that we need both to make a wide range of devices.
On touchscreens: Ignore the interface, we need touchscreens for web browsing.
The vast majority of sites are designed with a mouse in mind, and the nearest you can get to the speed and precision of a mouse on a mobile device is a touchscreen.
On the iPhone: Can we please stop praising/panning it until it's actually been released? It's one thing to make a device look good in a demonstration, it's another to successfully launch it to millions of consumers. Once you have millions of users, some of them are bound to run into problems you just hadn't thought of testing for.
It never ceases to amaze me about how great they say the iPhone touchscreen interface is. It may be but nobody (well very few) really knows. To me any manufacturer who announces a device then prevents people from actually trying it out usually has something to hide. In this case I suspect it was/is far from finished. I know Apple has kept quiet about devices until they are just about to be released but this is not what has happened this time. This also seems to be confirmed as they have stated that their latest Mac OS release is being delayed because all their programmers have been pulled onto the iPhone project.
The thing that intrigues me about the iPhone is not the 2 finger interface but that I think it uses a inductive touchscreen i.e. its not the physical touching of the screen that registers the response it but sensors underneath detect a disturbance in the magnetic field. I assume this because various reports say that you cant use it with a stylus or with gloves on and that you HAVE to use you fingers. This may well improve the screen clarity but I wonder how usable it will be compared to the more usual touchscreens.
A touchscreen can be a useful addition to a device. But I think you need a real keypad on a phone to make it truly usable on the move and to make it appeal to a mass market it has to be able to be used single handed.
My big issue with web browsing on touch screen devices is that when you drag to scroll (like on the N800), it is hard on some sites to find a "safe" area that isn't hotlinked to use for scrolling. On a low-res QVGA screen the problem is even worse on some sites. I actually find a blackberry-like scroll wheel or tracball to be the best method of getting around quickly.
Just to clarify, I was specifically comparing with the promise of the IPhone's touchscreen UI, NOT the reality (which may be rubbish) - the IPhone is irrelevant - my argument was more that the promise presented was what we want to aim for/compare with. It could have been pure fiction for all I care, it still represents a good aiming point I think, but taking into account the pros/cons other people have made.
I think it just makes sense in a lot of cases to remove the barrier to interfacing with the device, that keys etc represent - touching something on screen gives you the most direct connection with the device/virtual on screen button etc., other than a direct brain interface 😊
Alex
phonething.com
The iPhone will change the touch screen scene forever, and will make Nokia devices look like shite.
Bit of a schoolboy error forgetting about the Nokia 7700/7710 - Nokia's breakthrough touchscreen device. After 15 months of continued use, I've no plans to upgrade my 7710 (...although the N95 looks nice...) - I love it. I also seem to remember one of your AAS colleagues championing it in several articles.
The 7710 is essenitally the same platform that the Nokia 770 & N800 Internet Tablets are based on (although the former had Symbian S90 & the latter run Linux). All touchscreen devices - the first one is even a phone.
I think Nokia were well aware of touchscreen possibility long before the wankers at apple thought they'd diversify into telecommunications.
I think the biggest problem in mass marketing touchscreen, is your tyring to pursuede cretins who couldn't write their names in the sand with a stick, let alone use a pen and a piece of paper, to use a "stylus" to "write" on the screen!?!
The target market is lead by teenagers who have their phone in one hand and their dick in the other. So what if they don't want to use a pen to write. Maybe they should have concentrated at school.
Touchscreen, when implimented well, is THE most intuative interface ANYONE could use. What can be more natural than "seeing" something and then "pointing" at it. Babies do it in the cot.
Touchscreen is the future - of just about everything. Your phone, your PC, your TV/homehub multimedia device and TeasMade are all going to be touchscreen within the next five years. Get used to it. I have.