Mobile Magazine » user interface

Transparent Avengers UI Represents Future of Computing?

Michael Kwan — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:01:02 +0000

There’s a lot of high-tech stuff going on in the recent Avengers movie, but perhaps even more interesting is the glimpse we get inito the future of computing through those user interfaces.

We’ve seen the inside of Iron Man’s helmet before, showing us the heads-up display that Robert Downey Jr. uses to monitor the status of his suit and to target all the bad guys. There’s a lot of information being flashed at him all at once and you almost get the sense that they represent the evolution of the homescreen widget.

You’ll also notice that a lot of the displays are transparent. That’s already happening, to a certain extent, by Samsung and other companies. And again, we get those fancy blinking widgets again. You might also remember the scene where a window can be “swiped” over from one workstation to the next.

There is a lot of detail going on with these user interfaces. You can thank freelance visual artist Jayse Hansen, who was responsible for that work in The Avengers. It does make me wonder if these UIs are closer in scope to the future of Windows, Apple, or something else entirely.

I also wonder if the menu at the shawarma place is going to look like this one day…

[Source]

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First Look at Leaked BlackBerry 10 OS User Interface

Michael Kwan — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:43:36 +0000

Research in Motion, for most intents and purposes, is putting all of its eggs in this tenth basket. And now, we’re getting our first real look at what we can expect from the aforementioned basket. Shown here are a few leaked images depicting the user interface on BlackBerry 10 OS, a platform that is set to make its debut with BlackBerry smartphones a little later this year.

I don’t know about, but BlackBerry 10 OS is looking a lot like Android to me. They’re introducing homescreen widgets for the first time, for instance, giving you that same kind of widgetized appeal as Google’s smartphone OS. You could also say that the panels remind you of Windows Phone (Live Tiles) in some ways too. The leak comes by way of a document for “how to position BlackBerry 10 in future advertising campaigns.”

You’ll also notice that the app tray has been redesigned too, making it both cleaner and more functional. A folder of apps shows thumbnails of some of the apps housed within, for instance. The universal inbox, borrowed from PlayBook OS 2.0, makes an appearance too.

Is this a matter of too little, too late? Or will RIM surge back into prominence with BlackBerry 10? Do these initial screens excite you? Or do they scream of a smorgasbord of everything that’s already out there.

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Samsung Galaxy S III Going 3D?

Alexander Udalov — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:57:17 +0000

According to an article in Korean ETnews, that is retold by Phandroid, the Samsung Galaxy S III may sport a 3D-capable screen. There were several wishful renderings of Samsung’s new flagship phone swirling around in the Internet recently, all of them were mildly dismissed by Samsung.

Naturally, a presumed quad-core 1.5 GHz Exynos 4412 application processor for this phone might be a good basis to include 3D visual capabilities for its screen. Real question is, how much traction the idea might gain amongst consumers? Samsung 3D TVs are still looked upon as a niche product, however, maybe a phone with 3D UI capabilities will fare better.

Imagine a carouseling 3D TouchWiz 5.0 UI on such a phone’s home screen, or on apps screen. When the icons and widgets will be rendered really in 3D, it might be actually operated better with hovering swipes than applying the regular touch swipes. That is, if Samsung will embrace Cypress Semiconductor TrueTouch technology for its rumored Super AMOLED Plus HD capacitive screen’s sensor. But just as with those renderings from Russian artists, one of which is shown here, it may never happen.

Samsung Galaxy S III is expected to show at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February-March 2012.

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Nokia Gets Ready to Kill S60, Prep New Symbian UI

Michael Kwan — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:01:48 +0000

From a hardware standpoint, I’m totally digging my Nokia E71. It’s a great little smartphone, but the software side of things needs some serious jazzing up. The HTC Sense UI looks great. The iPhone UI looks great. Well, it seems that Nokia is finally looking to update its Symbian core.

Yes, Symbian and Nokia are technically separate, but you and I both know that they may as well be one and the same. I also know that I’m only running S60 3rd Edition, whereas the touch-based S60 5th Edition is supposed to look and feel better, but improvements can still be made.

In line with this, User Interface Technology Manager for The Symbian Foundation Scott Weiss is saying that S60 5th is just a temporary solution. Potentially in the near future, we could be seeing a whole new build based on Symbian. S80, perhaps?

Is this just a new UI or is it a fundamentally new platform altogether? It’s a little hard to say, but devices with the new Symbian-based UI should start popping up by 2011 or so.

Source: Intomobile

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