PTPT Shows Us Their Unique Android UI Skin
PTPT (spoken as petite petite) is a full-blown Android UI being developed by German software startup ExB. The interface reminds me a little bit of recent takes on future touchscreen computers seen in Sci Fi flicks. Items are dragged around or dropped onto each other to create interactions or reveal more info.
Divided into three main categories — people, places, and things — the user can interact with items by dropping them on a timeline or combining them. For instance, dropping the e-mail “thing” item into the timeline followed by dropping a contact’s “people” item will automatically sort the e-mail list to only correspondences involving that person.
The UI is designed to collect data in real time to update different items, such as adding a new e-mail contact to your “people” or learning commonly used words for its cloud-tag-style keyboard. More commonly used words appear in a list for one touch entry, or users can enter text via a standard QWERTY or through writing letters and words directly on the screen.
It’s not the most immediately recognizable Android UI, but perhaps that is what makes it so intriguing. The contact and messaging portions seem excellently handled, but accessing and running apps via PTPT may be a bit less intuitive. On screen widgets can be added, however, which does provide developers with some cool opportunities to use PTPT’s drag-and-drop item sorting functions. ExB is apparently in talks with some hardware manufacturers already, but we aren’t sure when the first devices using this UI will drop.
Check it out in action in Engadget’s hands-on video:
[via Engadget]