Still curious about the First ELSE smartphone and its nifty user-interface? Various videos of the handset in action have emerged, including a five minute UI demo from the ELSE’s launch in London this week. The handset is based on the Access Linux Platform 3.0, onto the open-source underpinnings of which designers Emblaze Mobile built the sPlay menu system, which is intended to be navigated via the right-hand thumb.
Rather than digging through numerous menus and pop-up boxes, sPlay aims to keep a consistent UI throughout the ELSE handset. We touched upon its more headline-grabbing functionality yesterday – the phone will record voice calls and store them along with records of when the call was made, and there are GPS-linked contextual reminders which flag up alerts whenever you’re near a preset position, for instance a shopping list while you’re near a supermarket – but Emblaze are planning an app store and building up to an SDK release for more functionality.
Video demos after the cut
Hardware, meanwhile, centers around a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen running at DROID-like 854 x 480 resolution, above which runs a row of OLED status indicators. The CPU is Texas Instruments’ OMAP 3430 chip, as you’ll find in the iPhone 3GS, and there’s a 5-megapixel camera around the back. Connectivity includes WiFi, Bluetooth and HSDPA.
It remains to be seen whether the ELSE can get to market and pick up sufficient user-share, or whether third-party developers really will jump on board (and maintain that clever UI). There’s no announced release date as yet, nor pricing details.
The hardware is impressive, too. It features the same TI OMAP 3430 found in the Palm Preand Motorola Droid, a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 854 x 480, a 5-megapixel still camera, video capture at 480p, and up to 32 GB of storage. Data will be handled over HSDPA and EDGE, so AT&T and T-Mobile are carrier candidates but Verizon is not.
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