2006 was the year of the QWERTY smartphone, will Nokia continue this trend?

I have an idea for a complex hinge mechanism that I think it might work.

It’s a combination of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E70 and a typical slider phone. Imagine in your mind for a moment the Nokia E70:

See how it looks like when it’s open? Why not create a design where the screen now slides up, and the two pieces of the keyboard slide together. It will be a complex engineering task, but if anyone can do it Nokia can. Back to the article at hand, Matthew Miller has a comprehensive list of every phone that came out this year with a QWERTY keyboard. It’s stunning:

QWERTY devices seemed to roll out with a bang after the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Q opened the floodgates. The models include the following devices:

• The Nokia E61 and eventually the Nokia E62 from Cingular in the U.S.
• The HTC TyTN Phone Edition device that leads the pack for the larger devices with a QWERTY keyboard
• The most powerful Palm (NSDQ: PALM) OS-based smartphone, the Treo 700p
• The Palm Windows Mobile upgraded Treo 700wx from Sprint (NYSE: S)
• The Nokia E70-2 that used a unique flip over keyboard solution
• The GSM version Treo 750v currently only available in Europe from Vodafone
• The Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) P990 that suffers from software issues
• The HP 6900 series Phone Edition device with a GPS radio
• The Treo 680 that added colors and a slightly new design to the Palm OS Treo
• The Samsung SGH-i320 that brought a super slim form factor to compete with the Q
• My current favorite device, the T-Mobile Dash
• The recently released Samsung Blackjack (SGH-i600) that adds a 3G radio to the i320 design

Source: Mobile Gadgeteer