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With all the hoopla surrounding touch input finally headed to the S60 platform with Nokia's upcoming 5800 XpressMusic, you'd never know that the UIQ platform, which also runs on top of the Symbian OS, had it first. Sure, it's not quite as advanced - touch more in the traditional PDA rather than iPhone style-- but let's give some props where it's due.

Anyway, it appears UIQ has just received a little more respect when it comes to Web browsing, at least. That's because a new Webkit-based browser from @Web has been introduced for the platform, which is used on the majority of Sony Ericsson's smartphones.

This browser promises to deliver a far better Web experience than delivered with UIQ natively. So users of UIQ version 3 smartphones can surf the Internet more like the desktop-experience delivered S60, iPhone and Google Android brethren.

You can download and give the @Web browser a try for free. But if you want to keep using it it'll cost you 8 euros (around $11).

Browser UI features

 

Full finger touch UI

 

Page control with finger

 

Accelerated panning

 

Automatic full screen browsing via auto-hiding Address bar and Navigation bar

 

Page rotation for portrait and landscape browsing

 

Four zoom levels

 

Intelligent Bookmark functionality (auto-sorting)

 

Bookmark folders

 

Bookmark favicons

 

URL auto-complete (from history)

 

URL auto-complete (from history)

 

"Page loading in progress" indicator

Browser Engine features

 

HTML 4.01

 

True web page rendering

 

JavaScript(tm) 1.5

 

HTTP 1.1 with support to secure and non-secure browsing

 

HTTP cache

 

HTTP cookies

 

AJAX support

 

Embedded audio (wav, mp3 and midi)

 

Netscape compatible Plug-in interface

 

External launch API

[All About Symbian via engadget]