Nokia may be about to launch a high-end phone with a high quality capacitive touchscreen to directly compete with Apple’s iPhone. Separate reports of recent orders for touchscreen components point to a new device being readied for later this year.
Nokia clearly likes this whole touchscreen business, and so do Nokia customers. The 5800 XpressMusic is doing well and the N97 – due in July – is one of the more hotly anticipated phones due this year. A couple of converging rumours/reports suggest that Nokia may be about to step things up a notch and produce a much higher quality handset that could compete more readily with the iPhone.
Taiwanese tech news site Digitimes is reporting that Nokia is to receive a shipment of capacitive touchscreen components from Wintek – the same component supplier that outfitted the 5800 with its resistive touchscreen. Capacitive screens – like the one used in the iPhone, funnily enough – are generally more responsive and accurate than their resistive siblings and can be sealed behind glass for extra durability and a much more ‘quality’ look and feel.
This report also tallies with earlier rumours that Nokia has ordered touchscreen integrated circuits from Synaptics that could support multi-touch (again, like the iPhone). Taken together, it does look like Nokia is working on something rather special. We don’t much like the phrase ‘iPhone killer’ – not least because it has yet to be used with anything resembling accuracy – but ‘iPhone rival’ sounds plausible, and is something to look forward to.
TBC | £tbc | Nokia (via Engadget)
