Gossip

First Smartphones from Sendo appear; hurt fingers

Sore thumbs made it easily the most talked-about product at Microsoft's mobility thrash - the Sendo Z100 Smartphone. It turns out this micro version of the Pocket PC has a joystick which needs redesigning.

You didn't need to monitor bad packets to find out that there are going to be more Smartphones than just the Sendo, which is the delight of the MDC (Mobility Developer Conference) here at the ghastly Hilton Metropole. Everybody is talking about it, and while most love it, there are worrying questions being asked.
What has caused whispering in corners is the discovery of a rival implementation of the Smartphone, almost certainly being build by HTC (Taiwanese, originally called High Tech Computers).
Trivially, perhaps, this caused cries of joy from the "thumb" generation (people under 30 years old, who are accustomed to thumb-operated joysticks) because the HTC reference design doesn't change your thumb prints if you use it.
The Sendo joystick, which has a small metal "nipple" sticking out of it about a millimeter, causes extreme pain if you try to scroll up or down or left or right. The HTC reference navstick is a little plastic dome which clicks neatly, without causing discomfort.
Sniffer was told that this wasn't what worried people about the Sendo phone, however. "The real worry for Sendo," said an anonymous voice from a very dark corner indeed, "is that they're asking five hundred quid for a phone, and HTC will probably undercut that by three hundred."

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