OK, I’ve never had a BlackBerry other than the fruity kind, and the fruit is much more pleasant to look at than the selection of BB’s pictured. I’m sure there’s plenty of people that disagree with me, but I don’t care. There’s no way I could persuade myself that I want a device that looks like, well anything like these, the form factor dislike also extends to Palm Treo’s as well.

There you go, in the same way that I dislike these devices purely for aesthetic reasons, I dislike the way that they seem to have invaded the psyche of the uninitiated masses, I mean how many times have you had to launch into the full three hour diatribe [concise version cause they must be an idiot] when some moron asks you about your Blackberry/Palm Pilot thingy when you pull out your WinMo device.

So when I see RIM filing a patent for a….

 Hybrid Portrait-Landscape Handheld Device With Trackball Navigation and Qwerty Hideaway Keyboard, that looks like this

   I start to think they are after some HTC styling, the phone design looks very familiar. This is much more like something I would walk around with. Out of character for me I actually had a look at the patent documents, cause I can’t see how a patent like this would be approved, what is so different to other phones with the same form factor from other manufacturers. The biggest difference seems to be the trackball, which is likely the replacement for the standard scroll wheel on the side of the BB.

Although it may be a bit late, a BB like this may actually be a conversion winner.

A device is disclosed for use in two different orientations. In one orientation, the keyboard is exposed to the user.

This orientation is named the landscape orientation because the device will be positioned such that its width is larger than its height. The user would opt for the landscape orientation for tasks that require the keyboard, such as inputting data, drafting emails, sending emails, and other functions typically associated with a standard computer.

The other orientation is named the portrait orientation because the device will be positioned such that its height is larger than its width. In addition, the keyboard is not used in this orientation and therefore hidden away.

The user would opt for the portrait orientation for tasks such as making and receiving telephone calls and for reading documents and emails.

The device detects the orientation positioned by the user and modifies the elements shown on the display screen so that they are presented in the correct orientation to the user.

via ZDnet

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