Just a couple of years ago the handset market had a plethora of designs from each brand to choose from! Quietly, flat touch screens seem to have swiped out the rest. The touchscreen smartphone form factor must be held responsible for the slow death of clamshells, flip-ups, sliders and similar form factors. And with every major manufacturer launching its flagship model as a touch smartphone, it is clear that this design is going to rule design aesthetics for some time to come.
But smartphones haven't always been touch-screen ones. Some time back, Nokia's Communicator devices were considered to be the smartest phones with email and internet accessibility, but they were extremely bulky. BlackBerry, with its trademark QWERTY keypad, turned a lot of consumers into texting addicts. .
That too became passé as consumers wanted smartphones to be fun as well . The two-handed N-Gage redefined mobile gaming and the Walkman series personalised mobile audio. But the touchscreen smartphone offered it all , in one package. Inclusion of big, clear screens, accelerometers, gyroscopes and proximity sensors heightened the entertainment experience.
Text addicts and professionals across the world tend to prefer the feel of a physical keypad. Flip phones, slide phones and candybar phones offer physical keypads with nice tactile responses. So why have only the touch smartphones been this successful?
Thomas Waldner, Senior Manager – Creative Product Design, Sony Mobile Communications, said, “As a past manufacturer of feature phones, one of our roles is to ease consumers through the transition. Phones with both touch and type keys did just that, giving consumers the choice to use either or from just one device, so essentially, the consumer has chosen.”
According to Waldner, it's also much easier to achieve portability with full touch phones than with any other form factor. For example, flip phones were a big rage not so long ago. Consumers loved the ‘flip to answer' or disconnect call feature. They also liked how the screen and keypad could be protected when the phone was closed. But new stronger chassis and touch smartphones toting toughened Gorilla Glass showed that one surface can have it all, while being strong enough. Moreover, sliders and flips had a major disadvantage. They could disintegrate easily due to accidental impact as they were two different components held together by hinges.
The advent of capacitive touch screen changed the game completely. It offered unparalleled ease of interaction with various types of software. All the best selling touch smartphones run on operating systems which offer a wide and democratised range of applications. Since many of these apps require multi-touch gestures and higher levels of interactivity (both for the developers and users), a big, capacitive touch screen delivers the space and freedom to play around with those.
So will the smartphone be a victim of its own success? Phone manufacturers have put all that can be put on a phone, from flashing lights to big speakers to even micro projectors. Isn't this one form factor jam packed already? Rahul Malhotra, Regional Head, Product Marketing, Motorola, disagrees. “The touch screen smartphone has not been maxed out. Innovation depends on consumer demand, so we can always expect new things to come.”
And what is yet to come? “New form factors like ‘Touch & Type' have already started penetrating the Indian market. In terms of innovation in form factors, the day is not far when there shall be an influx of new form factors like flexible display devices, phones worn as watches and detachable display and keypads,” said Sanjay Maheshwary, Marketing Head, Mobile Communications, LG India.