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BACKGROUND

Present day mobile devices such as mobile phones are often equipped with display screens that are combined with a transparent touch sensitive layer. Such an arrangement, which typically is referred to as a touch sensitive display, is typically configured to receive input by interaction with a user through a user interface, both by use of a dedicated pointer device (often referred to as a stylus) or simply by the user tapping the screen with a finger tip.

Needless to say, a stylus and a finger are quite different pointer devices. The tip of a stylus is smaller and lighter and it allows for more precise input than a human finger. The finger is larger and heavier and does not allow for very precise input, at least in terms of spatial resolution. On the other hand, the finger is always immediately available whereas the stylus typically is required to be extracted from a storage arrangement within or attached to the mobile device and, after being used, replaced in the storage arrangement.

Although it is possible to design and realize a user interface that is suited for either the stylus or the finger, a problem arises due to their incompatibility. That is, the use of a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone, involves a number of different short-term and longer term tasks. Some tasks require only one or two actions by the user, i.e. "taps" on the touch sensitive display, by the user and some tasks require several minutes and dozens of "taps" or "clicks". Hence, any prior art user interface that is suited to accommodate use by either the stylus or the finger is necessarily a compromise in this regard. This is particularly accentuated when considering small mobile devices having very small display screens, where a compromise is unavoidable regarding the size of displayed user interface elements and the number of displayed user interface elements. Furthermore, requiring the user to "take out the stylus" to provide input via the user interface in order to have the device performing a specific functionality is typically also a major burden, both in the sense that it is time consuming and often quite impractical for the user.

When designing mobile devices that support an "always-on" mode and instant use mode, designing for finger input instead of stylus use is a good principle. On the other hand, the functionality for providing the additional precision of stylus use should nevertheless be supported in order to provide a desired flexibility from the viewpoint of the user.

Ways to bridge the gap between stylus and finger user interface functionality is hence desirable, so that one single user interface would suit both types of functionality properly. Attempts to bridge such a gap have been made by providing designs of user interfaces that are compromises in that they, e.g., support stylus input and provide separate hardware keys that allow selection of user interface elements without tapping the screen, or by providing designs for finger input (the Myorigo device for example) or by allowing the user to scale and zoom the user interface elements as desired.