| Just as the year is opening to a slew of Android | | | | gestures to scroll and rotate its dial-up menu |
| smartphones emerging as the platform of choice | | | | arrangement. |
| among the world's leading mobile phone makers, | | | | Its UI clearly shows that the smartphone world has |
| there's another new and exciting platform on a new | | | | room for another feature-rich OS that has all the |
| smartphone carrying a radical look and feel. | | | | promise of challenging the Android. We hope to get |
| It comes from an Anglo-Israeli mobile phone maker | | | | hold of a trial unit and await the market verdict if |
| that has yet to make a dent in the mobile community. | | | | indeed it is a serious Android challenger. When it |
| Enter the Emblaze Mobile First Else smartphone. It is | | | | reaches the market, it will meet headlong with iPhone |
| nothing like anything on the smartphone landscape. | | | | 3Gs, Motorola Droid and Nokia N900 as its main rivals. |
| Meeting the Challenge with Unique and Upscale | | | | Interestingly enough, the First Else is actually powered |
| Features | | | | by the Texas Instrument OMAP 3430 processor that |
| At first glance, there's nothing striking about it. It's | | | | powers its rivals. It would be a revelation to check |
| another of those black monoblock touchscreen slabs. | | | | whether the Else Intuition does a more competent job |
| This time, it unabashedly gets inspiration from the | | | | than the Android. |
| monolith structure in Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space | | | | The upscale features are nothing new and are quite |
| Odyssey. Not surpassingly, it is the product of two | | | | common in high ends smartphones. Apart from a |
| years of a joint technical collaborative project called | | | | gorgeous capacitive display, you get the usual |
| "monolith." | | | | accelerometer for auto-rotate viewing consistent with |
| On closer look, what came out of that project is a | | | | the handset orientation. |
| defining product from the Emblaze Mobile company | | | | There's a proximity sensor for disabling touchscreen |
| with its First Else, it's first foray into the smartphone | | | | function when held to the ear in a call. You bet a |
| world with a new Linux-based platform it calls Else | | | | 5-megapixel autofocus camera with image stabilization |
| Intuition. Its Japanese partner Access, known for its | | | | as well. The First Else is a 3G/3.5G UMTS phone with |
| NetFront web browsers, Access Linux products and | | | | HSDPA and a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G. It |
| the Palm OS, made possible the new Else Intuition | | | | has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, MiniUSB |
| platform that brings gesture-controlled UI to a higher | | | | 2,0. 3.5mm headphone jack, GPS receiver and comes |
| plane. | | | | with either 16 GB or 32GB internal memory versions. |
| It is designed to be navigated with just one hand, the | | | | It doesn't seem to support microSD expandability, |
| First Else sports a 3.5" Wide-VGA multitouch | | | | though. Talk times and standby times have not been |
| capacitive touchscreen with a persistent control menu | | | | published but we expect its 1450 mAh LI battery to be |
| on its rightmost screen edge that can be activated | | | | up to the task. |
| with your right hand. You only need your thumb | | | | |