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Nokia has announced its S60 smartphone software platform will offer touch interface capabilities, enabling new intuitive application interfaces.

Finland's Nokia is showing offer new features for smartphones and (potentially) other devices running the Symbian S60 operating system, showing off a new touch screen user interface at this week's Symbian Smartphone Show in London. And, yes, the interface is startlingly like the much-hyped Apple iPhone.

"S60 on Symbian OS offers a great platform to innovate with Internet services", said Nokias mobile software sales and marketing VP Matti Vaenskae, in a statement. "We see experiences converging, and people demanding more and more of the functionalities that smartphones offer, both of which highlight the significance of ease of use."

With a touch-based interface, S60 users will be able to use features like touching icons and menus to access phone functions, shuffle through pictures by wiping back and fort across the screen, and even use a stylus to edit documents or messages. Nokia also plans to integrates support for tactile/haptic feedback (like shakes and vibrations) into S60 handsets, taking touch-based computing another step. The S60 system will also support Flash Video in its integrated Web browser, thereby offering a more complete online multimedia experience. According to the company, applications developed for the existing S60 Third Edition platform will continue to run unmodified on the touch-enabled Fourth Edition.

Nokia's hope is that the new capabilities in the S60 operating system will spawn a host of third party applications that, in turn, will drive S60 and Nokia handset sales. Unlike the currently closed state of the Apple iPhone, Nokia actively encourages third party developers to build applications and solutions for its S60 devices.

The new capabilities will be available to S60 device makers during 2008.