The Original Blackberry Form Factor
Last night while Jon and I were iChatting, we were showing off some of the gadgets we have for the camera, and Jon pulled out a Blackberry from back in 2000! I was pretty amazed at it - I forgot what it looked like! This was the original Blackberry that used the pager network not cellular, but what struck me was the form factor. It really was some thing cool.
I had him hold it up next to a 6680 so I could judge it's size, and it was a little thinner, and just a little wider than the phone. Wow, that's a pretty cool form factor! Imagine if you had that same sized device, with a nice color screen (with decent resolution) compact the keyboard a little so you can make it a bit thinner, and pop a phone in there as well. That would be a killer little gadget.
Again, since I saw Danger talk at MoMo about how they came up with "The Flip" and the reasons why, I've been looking at Qwerty devices with a new eye. Check out that Blackberry... A wide screen would be great to read the web and email on, even if it was a bit thinner than most screens. And if it was pocketable, you wouldn't have to worry about all the hinges and flip-flops of devices like the HipTop or the new HTC Wizard. It'd all be there.
Interesting! The vast, vast majority of phones are going to continue to have keypads rather than little qwerty keyboards, but still, it's neat to see a five year old design and realize how good it would be if it was simply updated with today's tech.
-Russ