14 DAY TRIAL // Gigabyte, the famous hardware and electronics manufacturer, announced today its first touch-enabled mobile user interface that will be integrated into its GSmart series of Windows Mobile handsets.
Named Smart Touch, the new UI seems very nice, having the advantage of being intuitive and simple, hence offering a high level "user friendliness", if I may say so.
Besides being easy to use, Smart Touch is also a highly customizable mobile interface, allowing users to add, change and remove up to 16 applications, as shortcuts on their handset's standby screen. Since 16 is a pretty big number when it comes to shortcuts for mobile displays, the Smart Touch UI doesn't keep all the shortcuts on the screen at the same time, but it organizes them into a list. The list is placed at the bottom of the display - users can browse it by simply swiping a finger across the screen, and they can access each application with an easy finger tap.
Knowing that most smartphones and Pocket PCs are targeted for business use, Gigabyte intends to bring with the Smart Touch UI as much info as possible to the middle of the handset screen. Since for the moment the new interface is still under development, it only allows users to bring two types of clocks to the middle of the screen, by moving their fingers to the right or to the left. More features of this kind will soon be added, says Gigabyte.
A nice aspect about the new UI is the fact that, in case you don't like it or you can't get used to it, GSmart allows you to use the classical Windows Mobile interface, with the familiar Today screen, so you're not "stuck" with the Smart Touch in case you're buying a handset that comes with it.
Gigabyte made available a video demonstration of the new Smart Touch UI, and we present it to you below. You'll notice similarities with the way Apple's iPhone interface is created, but I don't believe this is a bad thing in any way.
Gigabyte offers, under the GSmart brand, several Pocket PCs and smartphones, the newest announced being GSmart MW700 and GSmart MS800, two devices that pack advanced features, including 3.5G connectivity, built-in GPS, mobile TV capabilities, 2.8 inch TFT touchscreen displays and so on.
The Smart Touch UI will be available starting May 2008 when handsets with the new interface should be commercially available across Europe (no word about North America). We'll see then if the new UI is indeed as cool as it promises to be.