Something the new phones should have

[Guest afroahmed]

Wouldnt it be so cool if the next generation of smartphone flip fones by motorolla had turnable screens? sorry if im bien stupid and if they already do, but as far as i know they dont. How cool would that be??!! you could activate betaplayer, start up a dvd then rotate the screen and close the clamshell and watch your film easily!!!! please post your comments here.

[Guest Disco Stu]

I was getting the impression that it would soon become standard for clamshells. Doesn't the MPx have rotating screen ? We had pictures of an LG Smartphone with it not so long back.

Samsung seem to be running with the concept too.

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

The Samsung and LG twist phones weren't Smartphone unfortunately, and the MPx is just a two way flip (flip up on the top edge or side edge). Sounds like a cool idea for Smartphone, not entirely sure what the point is on the LG twist phone thats out atm though...

[Guest kurtfhouse]

I agree afroahmed, it would look cool and would make viewing vids a lot more pleasurable in full screen mode :P

[Guest afroahmed]

yeh. My bro has the lg it is the lg7100, its screen rotates because the camera is actual on the side of the phone, so u take pictures like a videocam!

[Guest gravity]

The MPx just has 2 hinges to allow the screen to be orientated both ways, now if they could do that with a phone the size of an MPx200 it'd be great. The best concept would be to use a touchscreen keypad similar to a neonode when you flip the phone, so you got 2 screens, and make an option to allow dual screen viewing, I think touch screen keypads are probably the way to go in clamshells as far as gaming is concerened, imagine being able to design button layouts that work well with your games, I'm sure it'd take a lot of the interface headaches out as far as the developer and end user community is concerned.

[Guest midnight]

touchscreen will never be introduced to MS Smartphone though, they where very clear about that from the very early days (although, i personally do feel touchscreen is VERY usefull and it does allow devices to be made a lot smaller without compromising screen size. Although, touchscreen in a clamshell seems a bit of a waste to be honest cos you wont be saving anything on phone size. And actually, if you allowed either touchscreen, or normal keypad use (ie an spv type phone with touchscreen) then you actually add to the interface problems.

Neonode have got away with it by having a very clever 'sweep' system, but they dont have a keypad to worry about either :P

Touchscreen isnt too good at certain types of game either. The main problem being that your finger/thumb would most likely get in the way of onscreen objects, and if you built in an onscreen joypad then you are taking up valuable space on screen. Neonode have a seperate joypad, which is cool, but they dont really have that many other buttons (just accept and cancel buttons which are too close to the joypad to be useable in fast games). Ideally i would have liked to have seen a couple of buttons on the side of the neonode :D

But, at the end of the day, I accept MS's decision to go with a standard phone layout, it keeps things simple and means that anyone can use it cos its like any other phone.

[Guest gravity]

I'm not talking about a phone we'll see in the next year or two, I'm talking about a phone we'll see 5 years down the road, we all know Pocket PC isn't going to last, it'll eventually converge with Smartphone. What I meant by adding a 2nd screen in the flip for touchscreen input was that you'd able to design the keypad layout, and lets face it, 5 years is a long time in modern technology, who's to say that highly responsive touchscreens that can compete todays mechanical keypads won't be around by then.

And we all know the neonode is a failure :P

[Guest Pondrew]

Neonode a failure? Nice joke Gravity.

At least, I hope you're joking!