What if the S60 UI was a bit different?
Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to re-write the S60 UI and make it more streamlined for touchscreens and make better use of the large screens. And I make sketches.
For some reason one of the things I dislike the most in the S60 UI is the mess that is the notification area on top of the screen. I would love to see it made horizontal and take less space. Also moving the software buttons to the top part of the screen would be thumb-friendly. The following screens may or may not make any sense and are not to be taken too seriously.
Open the application toolbar by touching the application tab. Depending on the application the toolbar could be auto-hiding, fixed or hidden.
Swiping down on the application tab reveals the running apps tab:
Ideas anyone?
Beautifull ideas. Did u participate in the UI brainstorm for symbian foundation. You should as these are very valuable ideas.
I did submit them but I’m guessing they are looking for some quick fixes that could be applied on the existing versions of Symbian. The ideas I’m suggesting would mean an entirely different UI expirience. I don’t know why it’s so hard to figure out how to improve on the current 5th Edition
1. – just give it kinetic scrolling, hide the scroll bar and use only as an indicator when needed
2. – contextual menus for the main actions in every screen
3. – loose the double clicking – replace with long press and context menu
4. – when opening the Options menu you shouldn’t need to scroll for anything – solve this by raising the max height of the menu as well as limiting the number of first level options to maybe 8 or the number that fits the menu without scrolling. The submenus are easier to access than options that need to be scrolled for.
5. – sort out the top area of the screen – reduce the height of the status bar by changing the status icons horizontal – this would allow the tab row to be rendered more nicely by giving it the full width of the screen. And if the app doesn’t have tab row use the extra space for apps.
6. – on horizontal mode use simplified notification area (like the browser does when vertical) – horizontal battery and signal meters etc. –> more screen space for apps. Add a setting for auto-hiding the software buttons and notification area.
7. – add an option to automatically change to full screen qwerty when turning the phone horizontal. add predictive text to use with qwerty.
All very basic things but would improve the S60 5th Edition experience remarkably.
Lets hope Nokia is listening. The 5800 would have been perfect it it had a more user friendly UI not to mention a better Camera.
looks lovely guys…If only nokia would implement it.. or as a matter of fact the symbian family,
I’m afraid the next time we’ll see a cool UI on a Nokia phone it will be on a Maemo device.
What software did you use to design this? I’ve got some ideas of my own but no software to put them on paper.
Nice ideas ! Will be writing a short article about those on my blog. Unfortunalety, you are absolutely right about Maemo and cool UIs in Nokia phones…
@Doug : use Photoshop
[...] Attention : ces images ne sont PAS des images de l’interface S60 ou de futures version, il s’agit uniquement d’essais d’interfaces (uniquement des maquettes graphiques) réalisées par Markus de Moubail.com. [...]
Hello,
I agree with the most ideas suggested. I think, the most annoying thing on my 5800XM is the poor implementation of the tap-control. Some areas support long-tap, but the most don’t. And I intuitively used it to look for a context menu, which is a powerful invention as I think. The other issue is the lack of a reasonable marking function. The way S60.5 it does by wandering through the options menu is dumb. A double click on a already selected item or two clicks with a significant delay should be faster. Maybe a selection rectangle is an option like in a “full-size” OS.
But I disagree to the predicate “thumb-friendly” for software buttons on the top. Normally, when in portrait mode I’m holding the device at the bottom edge. And doing so, I have my thumb at the bottom, too.
Regards.