Sure, a Google-sponsored phone OS in the way of
Android is pretty great news for mobile phone land, but what if your really had your heart set on some Google hardware this Monday morning? Well take heart, because Forbes has the skinny on an HTC device labeled "Dream," (most likely
not pictured above) which could very well be oft-rumored hardware of legend, and could also be hitting the market as early as next year. Apparently the phone is one of roughly five prototypes that Google had built to demonstrate the Open Handset Alliance software to potential members, and HTC's Peter Chou says in the two years it's been working on OHA designs, "this is the best one we've seen." The device itself, which measures about 3 x 5-inches, sports a touchscreen, navigational controls at the base, and a full swivel out keyboard. When swiveled the screen goes from portrait to landscape mode, but unfortunately that's the limit of info on the actual hardware. The software apparently has "time-sensitive" touch controls that expands your area control the longer you touch. Icons for your most important apps -- which are apparently email, text documents, and YouTube -- are lined up across the top of the screen. There's also some fancy stuff under the hood to keep an ongoing browser session open to speed launch times, and the browser downloads large files in stages to speed delivery. HTC is considering a commercial version of the phone, which we could be seeing as soon as the second half of 2008.
posted Nov 5th 2007 3:08PM
In your face lefties.
I don't know, a southpaw using this phone could use his or her left hand to assault an iPhone user - That would come in handy...
???
why do you bear so much ill will to us lefties?
Midknight: I'm a lefty myself.
With touch controls, I'd rather have more screen than hardware controls. Even on my Kaiser, I don't use the physical buttons that much ... the scroll wheel, mostly. Or the camera shutter. Of course, then people would whine "iPhone clone" or something...
Looks like bad ergonomics for thumbtyping in that keyboard. I mean, where would the nook between right thumb and index finger go with that pad sticking out to the right?