Nokia Plug And Touch Turns Any Display Into A Touchscreen [Video]

While Nokia had three new devices to show at Nokia World this week – the E7, C7 and C6 – the company's researchers also had some concepts not quite ready for primetime.  The Nokia Blog spotted "Plug and Touch" running on the Nokia N8, an app which basically turns any HDMI-connected display (whether HDTV, projector or something else) into a huge touchscreen.Video demo after the cut

The app takes advantage of the N8's HDMI port, putting the Symbian^3 smartphone's display up on your big-screen TV.  Then the handset's 12-megapixel camera is used to keep track of where your finger is, basically working as an impromptu optical touchscreen.

Right now, it's apparently not entirely accurate or polished, and Nokia's people are working on the speed of responsiveness.  At some point they're hoping that the phone itself won't need to be clamped into place and the physical connection cut, perhaps using WiFi streaming with DLNA instead.  With more of Nokia's high-end handsets packing HDMI connections, we're hoping this is something that graduates from the labs and appears on shipping devices – it's just the sort of thing Symbian needs to show people it's still a relevant OS.