Introduction
Manufacturers have been looking for an optimal control method on mobile phones since the first handheld devices have appeared, they would like to have something that can offer the highest typing speed on a relatively small surface. Of course the standard numeric keypad is still okay for basic tasks, but since we’re using our phone for messaging, web browsing and taking notes, this matter becomes an important one from time to time.
Lately – thanks to the evolution of technology – two trends have formed on devices that don’t have the classical keypad. The more conservative solution is the QWERTY keypad, which needs quite a lot of space, but if you have two free hands, this is surely the fastest way to type on a phone. All serious manufacturers have a couple of these phones, for example Nokia has E75 and N97, while we could mention Xperia X1 from the rivals, whereas the most experienced company is HTC, who have created a new best handset for this trend with Touch Pro2.
The other tendency is connected with the displays. If we already have a rather large surface on which we can draw anything we want, why can’t we have a cool virtual keyboard on it? Starting from iPhone and ranging to Samsung, LG and Nokia, we can find similar solutions everywhere, but this has the downside of not having any pressure point and the user can’t always be sure about pressing the virtual key for real. BlackBerry Storm brought a strange, but clever solution, even though the display panel that has a play of two millimeters didn’t really spread yet, and it might never do.
We received a Nokia E55 from XXL GSM with a strangely crammed up half-QWERTY keypad. This is nothing new, as we’ve seen a similar one on a BlackBerry (7100), and although some of you might remember the somewhat odd Sony Ericsson M600, that’s still not the same thing. That phone’s keys had separate left and right sides, while the subject of our review has keys with a single pressure point, even though they still have two characters on them.
The main question about E55 is of course the keypad. Can this solution really be a transition between the classical and QWERTY keyboards, both in terms of space and speed? How long will it take to get used to this layout, how annoying or comfortable is to use the phone this way? I’d like to put it forward that I am only of the lots of thousands of potential E55 users. My experiences might not be the same as those of customers who have spent a lot of money on E55 and will get used to this strange device even if that’s the last thing they do. They will have to fight with it, that’s sure.
A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!
