Symbian^3 will do resistive multitouch, says Nokia

The next wave of Symbian handsets will feature multitouch interactivity on both capacitive and resistive screens, according to a demo video featuring Nokia's David Rivas.

In the Phonedog video, Rivas shows off the Symbian^3 user interface, running off a laptop. He excitedly shows multitouch functionality, which he describes as "checking a box that needed to be checked with the Symbian environment for a long time", and notes that it will work on both major types of screen. So far, multitouch has only been available on capacitive handset screens.

Multitouch is also one of the focal points in Apple's patent broadside against HTC, so it's probably fair to say that Nokia and the Symbian Foundation will be keeping a keen eye on that particular battle.

Otherwise, the Symbian^3 UI shown by Rivas looks fairly like what's already out there from Nokia, only slicker and less clunky. Of course, this will be the first fully open source version of Symbian to be released, but it will also be the last version before a rather more radical revamp only vaguely described by Rivas at the start of the video.

According to Rivas, Symbian^4 will offer context and presence throughout applications. Not sure what this means in practice, but we're looking forward to seeing it in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rd3TD9g_Y