In a complete reversal of its "not enthusiastic" stance on touchscreens voiced last week by Antti Vasara, the company's General Manager of Mobile Devices, Nokia has come out in favor of that completely unproven little technology. "Optical sensors and touch will be the next big things," said Nokia Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanpera today, in the leadup to the CommunicAsia telecom fair. "I believe there will be a lot of innovation around these." Apparently he didn't get the "people don't like touchscreens" memo. And it's really too bad that Nokia's still waiting for demand to pep up before jumping into those scary waters, it'd be a shame to miss out on the "next big thing."

Since Apple's iPhone announcement a little over a month ago, touch screen handsets have been popping up all over our radar screen. As touch screens bet more attention in 2007, the Eliya is a new entrant with an actual distinguishing feature apart from a touch screen and a smartphone operating system -- dual SIM support. There are little and unremarkable tricks to get two SIMs into most phones (yeah, we know many are kinda low-tech), but how about OEM support for two cards? If you're into having two GSM carriers -- maybe one for voice and one for data -- the Eliya will hook you up from the start. No carving into your previous SIMs so you can stick them somewhere in a single SIM slot. Ok, we saved the kicker for last -- this Eliya unit can support both SIMs at once -- and you can be registered on two separate systems as once as well. No switching between SIMs in your phone's menu. Dual registration on two GSM systems at the same time -- and it's only 2007.