I know that's a bold statement, but bear with me.
It's been quite a while now since I wanted to first write about this application, and now the news that the first Beta release will be available on February 29th has got me excited at its huge potential again.
After the accelerometer 'craze' started last year, when Nokia made some accelerometer-related APIs available to developers, everyone was focusing their attention on apps that automatically switch your phone's display from portrait to landscape and vice-versa (out of which my personal favourite is Samir's RotateMe).
But then, at some point after doing a lot of work on RotateMe, Samir presented us with a new concept: Nokmote. What you could do (at least in theory) with this app was tilt the phone to suggest movement (either in games or in the menu), very similar to the way the Wiimote works (hence the name). However, to this date, Samir has only released one beta version, which has a very sensitive sensor, that deems it usable only in games (and even there with some attention paid to the way you hold the device).
Since I first heard about the Nokmote concept, I obviously saw its usefulness in games, but, unlike many others apparently, in the browser. Because of the N95's mere QVGA resolution, even if the S60 (Webkit-based) browser renders pages almost exactly as they would be seen on your average computer, a lot of scrolling is needed. And this to me is highly annoying. Up/down scrolling, let's say that's bearable, but left/right as well...takes a way a lot of user-friendliness. (The higher-resolution screen is, for example, one of the reasons that the iPhone's browser, also Webkit-based, is a lot easier to use than the S60 browser - less scrolling is involved).
And to people like me who would like to have to scroll as little as possible, this situation is identical in every other browser available for S60 (Opera's Mobile and Mini, for example - even with Small Screen Rendering enabled, a lot of vertical scrolling is required).
Samir is still working on Nokmote, but, from what I know, focusing more on gameplay (he has actually hinted that Nokmote might support two operating modes in the future - Game and Menu, but nothing yet).
And this is where KEYnetik, Inc. comes in. A month ago, they announced (via their site and a very promising video) Rock'n'Scroll, an app that basically does three things:
- uses sensitive sensor movements when playing games (continuous tilt - also useful while scrolling through large lists such as songs or contacts)
- uses less sensitive sensor movements when in the menu or any other app (Flick-mode - requires a flick of the wrist in the desired direction for cursor movement)
- rotates the screen automatically from portrait to landscape (a la RotateMe), but with a twist: when the screen is in portrait mode, the default mode is Flick-mode, and when the screen is tilted to landscape orientation, the default mode is Game mode (these modes can also be manually toggled by pressing the Pen key).
What can I say, I can't wait for it to be Friday!
And btw, on Friday the 29th, Rock'n'Scroll Beta1 will be available for download from the KEYnetik forum (you must register for free in order to have access). Being a beta release, the developers will obviously (also) use this forum as a way to get valuable feedback from users.
Because of the recent (neverending) issues with Symbian Signed (that have been documented again and again over the net - just try googling it), the application (the first beta, at least) will be released in an unsigned form and will require signing with a valid developer's certificate before it can be installed.
[Source: Symbian-Freak]
