Smartphone with Weeble-like screen

 

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By Matt Whipp

Posted on 16 Jun 2003 at 17:51

MyOrigo, a subsidiary of handset maker Microcell, will release its flagship MyDevice in high street stores as well as through network operators.

MyOrigo reorients mobile devices
MyDevice has a number of unique, and of course patented, features geared around making the device as physically ergonomic as possible.

For example, the colour display is self-righting, so no matter what orientation you hold the device, the display remains upright. And picture orientation happens on the fly, so if you're viewing an email, simply hold the MyDevice so that the screen is landscape and 'feel the width'. But for a 'To-Do' list you might find it more convenient to do so in portrait.

Another fine touch is its mirror ability - an attempt to make viewing documents formatted for larger displays easier. It simply gives you a window on to an area of the document as if it was much larger and slightly in front of you - imagine you were reading it in the dark with a torch.

But there's a physical element to this in that you can angle the MyDevice to 'point' at different areas, just the same as you would angle a torch to view different areas.

More ergonomic showboating is present in the rumble-screen. The touch-sensitive screen can sense where pressure is exerted and respond with a variable vibration. This is particularly effective when, say, typing an email using the on-screen keyboard - at each successful press of a key, the device effects a satisfying shudder, making the experience more akin to typing on physical keys rather than a flat screen.

The touch-sensitive screen can also be used to stroke through pages as if you were reading a book.

The array of effects is made possible by the operating system - a Java-based environment from Tao called Intent that is agnostic of the hardware underneath or other environments it is to work with.

The PIM applications sync with the likes of Outlook, as you might expect and as a phone it offers a tri-band GSM radio (900/1800/1900), although the radio element looks almost hot-swappable, and CDMA or 3G (W-CDMA) would be reasonably easily implemented.

It also has a VGA camera, a full-colour display of 320 x 176 pixels in dimension and has 32MB of Flash ROM (the OS is 4 to 5MB so most of that is free) and 64MB of RAM. There's also an SD slot to add more memory or other applications or games. With its stereo headphones it also doubles as an MP3 player.