Mobile & Wireless is an Independent Blog Concerning Various Information, My Thoughts, Ideas, and Sometime Critics on ICT, Internet, Mobile, Wireless, and Data Communication Technology
Older Post
Newer Post

Touchscreen Trend Affects Keypad Crowd

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this week, Digit Wireless seemed happy that the industry is currently obsessed with touchscreen technology for mobile devices. That's not because Digit makes touchscreen technology -- far from it.

Digit Wireless is the company behind fastap technology, which is an approach to keypad design that integrates a raised set of alpha keys and a lowered set of number keys, supported by error prevention software.

Fastap-enabled handsets are geared toward that middle 70 percent -- not the emerging market crowd or the BlackBerry toting heavy data user. Even before the release and success of the iPhone, buttonless touchscreen phones have been capturing the consumer eye. As this trend continues to rise, new phones are being announced that call into question the suvival of buttons on future phones.

Digit Wireless says it has seen a lot of interest since the launch of the iPhone, because consumers, carriers and handset makers are once again looking to provide a better user interface for handsets and touchscreens are too expensive for the mid-range user.

Digit Wireless' new CEO Robert Blumenthal said that touch screen feature phones are sometime limited by the technology. "The Prada phone, for example, is too sensitive," he said. Blumenthal and other Digit executives agree, however, that fastap is targeted at the middle 70 percent of wireless subscribers: Not the upper 15 percent or bottom 15 percent. – [Brian/FierceWireless]

LG-KE850 Prada

The handset is a mere 12 mm thin (just shy of Samsung's Ultra Thin 10.7 mm phone) with a 3.0 inch wide LCD screen, a 2.0 megapixel camera and an MP3 player. It boasts USB v. 2, EDGE tri-band, BlueTooth 2.0 and GPRS connectability. One of the breakout features of the phone is that it's "buttonless," meaning is makes use of a touchscreen (no stylus.)

On top of the hardware specs, the LG KE850 PRADA comes with a comprehensive set of software. As you might expect, there's a multimedia player capable of playing MP3, AAC, WMA and RealAudio sound files, plus MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 video.

The KE850 has a web browser with Adobe/Macromedia Flash support, a document viewer (supporting text, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat file types), plus an email client and messaging applications.

Samsung Giorgio Armani

The tri-band handset features a 3-megapixel camera, 2.6-inch 262K color QVGA touchscreen LCD, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support, microSD expansion and more. Most notably, the device features "haptics," which means that users can feel an immediate mild vibration when they touch icons on the display.

The Armani phone's interface is similar to the menus on the Ultra Smart F700. A three by four grid, each column and row is lit by a band of color that highlights your choice, creating a cross effect. The phone uses haptic feedback, buzzing slightly to indicate it has accepted your input, and the screen seemed very receptive to our touch. We would have liked some scrolling effects, perhaps a tracking cross that followed us as we dragged our finger from choice to choice, but the menu is still quite luscious.

HTC Touch

The compact HTC Touch features an advanced touch screen that lets you operate the smart phone with your fingertips. The Windows Mobile 6 smart phone also has an updated interface, integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a 2-megapixel camera.

It's not quite multi-touch like the iPhone, though it does offer "a new and unique way of controlling touch screen-based devices by recognizing and responding to the sweep of a finger across the screen," according to HTC's press release. What's more, TouchFLO automatically distinguishes between stylus and finger input and will act accordingly.

Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone has been at the center of technology circle discussions since its announcement in early January 2007. The touchscreen device is an AT&T-serviced phone fused with an iPod, multimedia center, email and Internet connection and most major features common to smartphones.

It is a sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device that include a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it's close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. Amazingly, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes with CoverFlow out of the gate.

0 people have left comments

Commentors on this Post-