Possible New Touch-Screen Phone with Projection Keyboard
A new touch-screen phone from a mystery company has been detected on the internet by tech magazine, T3. The O1, as it is apparently called claims to be launching towards the end of next month and is reported to come with a 5 megapixel camera, 3G connection and a huge 32GB of internal memory.
Click to enlarge
The O1 Phone
There isn't any specifications on the website though, so it was not immediately clear where T3 got the technical specifications from - or at least it was initially. Checking who owns the domain name via a whois look-up, found that the technical contact for the website is an email address registered with Future Publishing - which just happens to be the publisher for the T3 magazine.
The use of the T3 website as a screenshot for the handset was also a bit of a giveaway that at the very least, there is some linkage between the two firms.
One of the most interesting aspects of the handset though - based on the image on the website - is the projection keyboard. The projection keyboard projects the image of a computer keyboard onto practically any flat surface. An infrared system senses the letters and numbers typed by the user.
These forms of keyboard have been conceptualized since 2002, but never actually launched in a commercial mobile phone. Back in May 2002, Siemens Procurement & Logistics Services (SPLS) secured a license for the 'Virtual Keyboard' developed by VKB - but never did anything with it. Rival vendor, Canesta announced its projection keyboard later that same year.
Whether this is an actual live mobile phone - or just a bit of marketing by the tech magazine we shall have to wait and see.
On the web: T3 - Whois - Canesta - VKB - The O1 Phone
Posted to the site on 24th August 2008
