Form factors I want to see come back
By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 11:19 PM PST In Ideas and rants
The shower apparently is a short term solution for my post CES exhaustion. I’m listening to my body and it is telling me to go to bed. I want to show this Sony Clie PDA off before I snooze because it’s a form factor I fell in love with and want to see come back:
The screen rotates and folds over the keyboard so you can now access the device via touch. Sony also made this beauty:
Friend of mine, Greg from CES, actually owns one of those. They were way ahead of their time when released but I think Nokia (NYSE: NOK) can strike gold by bringing it back.
Still don’t get it?
Look at any tablet PC. The screen sits on a single central hinge so that it may open and close like a regular laptop. The beauty of this device however … is that the screen can rotate and collapse over the keyboard so now you’re basically holding a writing/touch surface.
May the next internet tablet adopt this design, as well as the next E series device!
Advantages:
- Screen can be protected at all times
- Full QWERTY keyboard available when you need it
- Can make your device look like an internet tablet
- Can make your device look like an iPhone (zing! … iPhone commentary some other day)
Goodnight!
Blast from the past! I actually owned and used both of those Sony devices. I was pretty ticked off when Sony suddenly abandoned the Clie line and left a lot of users holding the bag. The funny thing is, with the amazing articulated hinge on the N93, Nokia has already demonstrated it has the engineering skills and product vision needed to manipulate the relative position of the display to screen for different use cases.
Way cool. I also had both of those. The UX-50 was really ahead of its time. WiFi, BT, Camera…
fyi – alot of the newer laptop tablet pc’s are this form factor. Like a regular laptop, hinged at the center, you can swivel it around and lay it flat and you’re good to go. Freakin awesome.
yea i basically agree with what everyone here already said, these sony clie’s were WAYYY ahead of their time
now i want to see them come back with newer, faster, and lighter technology!