A demo video showing the new S60 touch UI in action has just been posted to one of the “official” S60 blogs:
http://blogs.s60.com/seeintos60/2008/02/s60_ui_innovations_demo.html
In order to save you the hassle of looking at it yourself - essentially, we are looking at evolution rather than revolution. Nokia did not redesign the S60v3 interface we know and love - they just made slight additions and added touchscreen support in order to reduce the time needed to scroll around with the 5way nav.
I personally think that existing S60 applications will be “compatible” with the new OS right from the start - as already said, the UI widgets essentially stay the same; you only get a new way to interact with them. As for newly-developed programs…S60 Touch apparently isn’t as flexible as operating systems developed for touchscreens - for example, I assume that a dialog like the one shown below(from Binary Clock for Palm OS) will not be possible without custom UI:
On the other hand, of course, this will probably mean that S60 Touch apps will probably will be usable without the touchscreen.
In the end, I am pleasantly surprised at how well Nokia has managed to integrate the touchscreen while not breaking the existing S60 “look-and-feel”. While a dedicated touchscreen OS definitely is more “flexible”, Nokia’s compromise between one-handed usability and flexibility seems to be pretty close to the sweet spot.
What do you think?