Thursday, September 9, 2004
RIM's New Blackberry 7100t -- And Its Funky Keyboard
Posted by Janak Parekh in "THE COMPETITION" @ 07:00 AM
Yesterday, there was a flurry of announcements and quick looks at RIM's new always-on email communicator, which looks much more like a smartphone than any of their previous devices.
I was initially not going to post on this, as it's more fodder for Smartphone Thoughts than Pocket PC Thoughts, since the new device doesn't have a touchscreen just like the old one. However, after reading some of the reviews, I thought the thumbboard was interesting enough to merit discussion. In order to make the device more compact and phonelike, they rearranged the keyboard so that two characters are on each key. They then use a T9-like predictive text entry system called SureType, where you hit each key only once and let the device guess which letter you meant. Since it's only guessing amongst two characters as opposed to three on any given key, the reviews say it's amazingly accurate. I'm now wondering if these kinds of keyboards should be adopted by Pocket PC phones or Pocket PCs in general to help shrink integrated solutions, or if the Treo-style thumbboard is still preferable.
Rumors also suggest that this unit will have Bluetooth, which might make it an attractive companion to a Pocket PC (use this for email and phone calls, and Pocket PC for full-featured PIM functions and webbrowsing). What do you guys think?
I was initially not going to post on this, as it's more fodder for Smartphone Thoughts than Pocket PC Thoughts, since the new device doesn't have a touchscreen just like the old one. However, after reading some of the reviews, I thought the thumbboard was interesting enough to merit discussion. In order to make the device more compact and phonelike, they rearranged the keyboard so that two characters are on each key. They then use a T9-like predictive text entry system called SureType, where you hit each key only once and let the device guess which letter you meant. Since it's only guessing amongst two characters as opposed to three on any given key, the reviews say it's amazingly accurate. I'm now wondering if these kinds of keyboards should be adopted by Pocket PC phones or Pocket PCs in general to help shrink integrated solutions, or if the Treo-style thumbboard is still preferable.
Rumors also suggest that this unit will have Bluetooth, which might make it an attractive companion to a Pocket PC (use this for email and phone calls, and Pocket PC for full-featured PIM functions and webbrowsing). What do you guys think?
