Enhancing Map Viewing on Symbian Series 60 Smartphones using Camera as 2D Input Device

This paper describes a simple implementation of a map viewing application for mobile smartphones that is enhanced by using the camera as a 2D input device. Due to the small screens and tedious input devices found on most mobile phones, this research intends to give users an insightful way of navigating through maps on their mobile phones using a new input technique. The idea is to use your mobile device as a “peephole”/virtual window [3] to a large virtual workspace. An evaluation of this implementation was conducted and the results presented here. The results reject our hypothesis that our new input technique would make navigating maps on small screens easier. However, this result was due mainly to the input mechanism not being responsive enough. The device that this implementation was tested on was an entry level smartphone and thus testing was done using the poorest available camera and slowest processor available. Using higher-end smartphones with higher quality cameras and faster processors could prove to provide better results