“In the pursuit of increasing the size of the display and the numeric keyboard, but not at the price of bulky dimension, some compromises had to appear. The unique thing here is the new navigation method Sony Ericsson have used – three touch sensitive buttons and 4-way d-pad built in-between the keypad. Yes, you’ve heard it right – in order to save place, the D-pad is not above the keyboard, it is over it, surrounding the “2” and “5” buttons. As the 5th (central) position, you would find on most other phones, cannot be placed here, it is exactly above, with the left and right soft buttons respectively next to it. Those three keys are pretty small and if you don’t want to touch the display, which often results in leaving of fingerprints, you must touch them with the tip of the finger. Still, they react pretty accurately and by any mean better than the ones of the Samsung phones and the LG Chocolate we’ve used. This is due to the technology, which is activated by the touch and not by electricity over your skin. Like in standard touch-sensitive display, you will find on any WM Professional device or SE UIQ phone, this buttons can be activated with stylus or any other object and not only with finger. After the first official photos were revealed, most people were concerned about the manipulation with the D-pad, but as we’ve mentioned above, the big spaces between the numeric keys are enough for housing it. It actually has excellent relief and is very usable, more than are most others. Once you get used to the fact that the “central position” is not in the centre of the d-pad but above, you will have no concerns about it.” Read more here:
Facebook and RIM Join Forces!
“Research In Motion, (RIM) makers of the BlackBerry Smartphone, and Facebook are joining forces. A specially modified version of Facebook is now available for Blackberry users. This service, that is only available to T-Mobile subscribers, has been modified to take advantage of the Blackberry’s push-based architecture. In fact, this Facebook version is almost identical to its PC counterpart, which includes a whole slew of options, such as but not limited to image uploading, wall to wall messaging, poking, and more. RIM president Mike Lazaridis explained the similar agenda that the two companies share. “Facebook and RIM share a vision for enhanced mobile communications and social networking based on open, standards-based platforms and this has allowed us to produce a rich mobile application for Facebook users that leverages the push-based architecture, multimedia features and industry-leading usability of the BlackBerry solution.” Industry experts believe that almost 19% of those who use the PC version of Facebook will make use of the wireless adaptation.” via mobilewhack.com