“The Way We Live Next” – Nokia glimpsing into the future

I was reading the Crave when I stumbled upon this material. The Crave was invited to participate in Nokia’s glimpse of the future event, "The Way We Live Next". The event took place at Nokia’s Research & Development facility in Oulu, Finland (not far from where I’m at).

The biggest hype in the Nokiasphere right now seems to be the newly announced S60 touch UI. At the event Nokia presented an animated demonstration of the S60 Touch. Of course all post iPhone devices with touchscreens will draw attention to Apple’s innovations. I bet Apple’s lawyers already are planning on how to file lawsuits.

The S60 Touch user interface is designed to handle multiple ways of interaction and input, the most obvious one being tapping on the screen but also including a stylus for handwriting recognition as well as a full slide-out qwerty keyboard. Sounds good so far!

This time Nokia will take advantage of the tilt-sensors built in some newer N-series models. Similar to the iPhone the new interface lets you view content in portrait or landscape mode and users can change view mode just by tilting the device.

One new interesting project aims to let the user take photos of foreign words with the phone’s camera. A built-in application translates the text in your photos into your own language, guiding both tourists and business users. This is still in development phase, but will become reality soon.

This other photo-based development project lets you identify objects by simply pointing your camera at them. Developers hope to use this technology in shops, providing product information for customers pointing their cameras all over (cant really see this happening where I live?).

Some kids at a Nokia sponsored school had developed these cool robodogs.

I know lots of power users dream of being able to remotely control their home’s appliances with their mobile phones. Luckily a developer at Nokia has come up with an application that alongside a few bits of inexpensive hardware lets you control your heating, a web cam and turn on and off anything plugged into a plug socket using a special adapter.

Fortunately for all of us Nokia takes environmental issues very seriously and is investigating the possibilities of replacing battery technology with alternative energy sources such as solar and kinetic energy.

Nokia is also represented in the massive multi-player game, Second Life. The image above portraits Nokia’s office where Second Life inhabitants can use a giant phone to call real-life people.

Nokia rounds up the event by showing off how well they know the market and insure that they will be able to compete with the iPhone and coming trends. Right on Nokia!

Via The Crave