Monday, February 06, 2006

Yet another new key pad for us to learn!

I got a press release today about new handset from Sony Ericsson due to be in the Shops by the summer. The interesting thing is when you look at the image of image of the phone and see that it has a rather interesting arrangement when it comes to text entry. Gone is the standard 3/4 letters spread across the 2-9 keys and we get a Qwerty keypad spread across all the keypad.

When you look at the details for the phone you get to see that it will use the Symbian software found in smartphones which I think gives a clue that this could be a handset that focuses on being more than just a phone whilst being not too big. It should give the user a machine that does more than just texting when it comes to messaging whilst still maintainging the small size that most of us want.

Reading the small print on what you get the interesting feature for me is that it comes with Stero Bluetooth. Will this mean that we can expect to see voice becoming an important element of the data features once third parties get involved? Last week another Press Release spoke of France Telecom's work on Stero VoIP, perhaps that might just make it over to Orange in the next few years, thats thats another posting!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi
Do you know a url where I could see a photo of this phone please
Steve
www.the3gportal.com

Ian Wood. Principal Wireless Foundry LLP said...

Steve,

Click on the title and you get the image you want.

DE

Anonymous said...

Do you think the keypad is pretty product design winning out over the HCI peepz at Sony Ericsson and whatever happened to the old Ericsson thumbboard you used to be able to clip on?

Ian Wood. Principal Wireless Foundry LLP said...

Hi Ged,

Managed to play with this handset as well as the W950 and have to say that the industrial design guys have a form factor that works with my slow digits. What you have to consider is that with a touchscreen you also have input along the lines of a pda.

When UIQ announced this phone I thought that it would be the one that I updated to. However as of Tuesday I am happy to forget the productivity and have the entertainment.