This story posted earlier today on Gizmodo with pictures of what appears to be a new Android handset from HTC. Tentatively dubbed the ‘G2’, it looks to be the successor to HTC’s T-Mobile G1 released earlier this year.
looking at the two side-by-side, you can see that the menu section at the bottom has had a redesign, and the bezel at the bottom of the screen has gone (I think the screen is the same size as the one on the G1).
You may also notice that it looks a lot more glossy and curvaceous compared to the G1. On top of that, they’ve decided to scrap the QWERTY keypad that was present on the G1, and, in my opinion, made it one of the main reasons in people choosing it over the iPhone.
The world of mobile phone technology hasn’t really been the same since that little-known company in Cupertino came out with the iPhone. It sold 4.4m units in the Q4 of 2008 alone, and it has quite an impressive share of the smartphone pie:
It easily claims over 25% of the smartphone market share – despite not having a QWERTY keypad and not even supporting Cut & Paste!
Ever since the phone came out there have been countless copies and some strong competitors, but none have gotten close… yet. This year Nokia are set to release their superb looking N-Series N97, and Palm surprised a lot of people at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month with the announcment of the Palm Pre.
These two new handsets aim to achieve the best of both worlds, by including touch interfaces and QWERTY keyboards. But is that too many input options? It’s not so bad on the G1 because you can use the mechanical buttons for everything if you wish and it doesn’t feature a touch keypad.
Does the rise of touch interfaces on mobile phones mean the end for the traditional mechanical side of things? Will we only see more than three buttons on the high-end/business-oriented smartphones? If this is to be the case, then I think it’s about time that people looked for revolution, or even evolution, as opposed to blatant plagarism of competitors models.
Just Barley 