Chuong Nguyen
11-16-2007, 09:04 PM
For those of you curious about the optical joystick on the Samsung i780, the::unwired (http://www.theunwired.net/?item=videoview-samsung-sgh-i780-optical-joystick) has a video preview of it in action in both "mouse" mode with the cursor and as a more traditional directional pad.
Samsung's directional pad is like an optical pad or a touchpad found on many laptops, except crammed into a smaller space. HP had tried to pioneer this technology on the HP iPAQ hx4700. On the iPaq, users can physically press down on the up, down, left, or right raised points to activate the directonal pad function or use the trackpad to enable mouse pointer mode.
Personally, from watching the video, it looks like it's a bit more work with the optical trackpad to use than the traditional directional pad found on most current phones. If Samsung had used a trackball, like the newer BlackBerry models and the Sidekick, then perhaps it would be a bit easier. With the trackpad, as on the i780, there's a lot more panning and scrolling on such a tight, small pad. If I had thought I had the "CrackBerry thumb" ailment typing on small keyboards, this sure doesn't help.
Also, from the video, I am not sure if you can actually "click" down to use the directional pad like on the HP iPaq hx4700, or if it's swiping the finger up to create a directional pad up click. It looks to me to be the latter on video, which doesn't seem to be a time-****r. However, it does have a touchscreen so if users get fed up with the optical pad, they can use that instead.
Samsung's directional pad is like an optical pad or a touchpad found on many laptops, except crammed into a smaller space. HP had tried to pioneer this technology on the HP iPAQ hx4700. On the iPaq, users can physically press down on the up, down, left, or right raised points to activate the directonal pad function or use the trackpad to enable mouse pointer mode.
Personally, from watching the video, it looks like it's a bit more work with the optical trackpad to use than the traditional directional pad found on most current phones. If Samsung had used a trackball, like the newer BlackBerry models and the Sidekick, then perhaps it would be a bit easier. With the trackpad, as on the i780, there's a lot more panning and scrolling on such a tight, small pad. If I had thought I had the "CrackBerry thumb" ailment typing on small keyboards, this sure doesn't help.
Also, from the video, I am not sure if you can actually "click" down to use the directional pad like on the HP iPaq hx4700, or if it's swiping the finger up to create a directional pad up click. It looks to me to be the latter on video, which doesn't seem to be a time-****r. However, it does have a touchscreen so if users get fed up with the optical pad, they can use that instead.