Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Touchscreen and physical QWERTY keypad - best of both worlds?

Just when I was lamenting the lack of touchscreen handphones with QWERTY keypads in a candybar form-factor, Palm drops the Pixi onto US shores. While we're not likely to see it on sale here (unless it gets a GSM radio), it's still nice to see that this form-factor works.

Back to my original story. One of the rare examples of the above form-factor is the Samsung i780, which strangely has not been replaced yet. This while Samsung launches model after model of touchscreen handphones without keypads.

After trying it out in person at the Samsung flagship store in Vivocity (this was before I got my Nokia E71), the only thing that stopped me was the optical mouse D-pad. Instead of a normal D-pad, Samsung saw fit to use a thumbnail-sized touchpad.

Interestingly, the other current handphone with this form-factor is the Palm Treo Pro, which I excluded then because of its high price...

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