There was this thing called Surface that was announced yesterday, some sort of tablet with a great keyboard+smartcover fusion that (admit it) has surprised quite a few people. A (risky) move by big M to set a pretty high standard of what future Windows8 and WinRT slates should be like, but no big details have been announced yet (no official price, specs…), so we decided to move to the next best thing announced this month: Frog’s Feel UX for Sharp.
Japanese manufactures (as well as carriers) are known for having added some pretty amazing customizations to the Android universe and Sharp is no exception. Their newest Aquos phone model with Android 4.0 will include a new usability approach starting this summer (Japan only unfortunately) to correct some of Android’s fundamental issues.
This user interface has been designed in collaboration with Californian studio Frog well-known for many of their other collaborations with the tech-industry (HP, Intel..). As in many other cases the paradigm of simplicity + usability was installed @ Frog’s headquarters and pretty much after a year the final result is ready to reach some of Sharp’s smartphones. Some nice features include the animated weather motion screen or the highly customizable lock-screen, and for the rest… you have the video up here.
No Feel experience outside the land of the rising sun, and much like Infobar, Plenue and many other Japanese candies I guess we’ll only get them in our dreams.
