First ELSE Mobile Phone Hands-On

We managed to test the First ELSE Mobile Phone from a new company called ELSE Mobile at CES this week. From the few minutes we got to play with the phone you can tell they have a very unique and smart approach to the phone design. It was immediately easy to use and intuitive.

The keyboard was really good at figuring out what you typing, and despite it being small, it was pretty accurate. For being a pre-production phone, the UI was extremely fluid. The phone app was really cool.

As can be seen in the photos here, the phone has a unique user interface called ELSE Intuition that is designed to work with just your thumb. Looking at the menu system it does seem like it is for right handed people only although ELSE do say a screen flip option will be available in the future and they go further saying it does actually work well in either hand in the current form. The user interface looks different to what you have probably seen before as it has a more sci-fi type look which we hear was taken from films like the Minority Report. As mentioned earlier though, it’s very intuitive and fluid.

The camera’s live view feature eliminates the usual mobile phone camera stutter and works quite well. The camera is capable of capturing 5 megapixel photos. The only think missing here is a flash.

Technical specs for the phone show that it measures 115.6 x 56.6 x 13mm. The screen has a wide aspect ratio and can display 854 x 480 pixels. It measures 3.5 inches and features tactile feedback. The screen is also capacitive touch rather than resistive. Connectivity is as can be expected in that it has WiFi at 802.11b/g along with Bluetooth. For location based services a GPS and AGPS unit is installed. The battery has a capacity of 1450mAh.

In conclusion it seems like they weren’t really trying to be inventive, just applied some novel approaches to the interface to help make touch screens easier to use one handed. The phone also felt solid, not cheap- like my blackberry does. We did not get a chance to make any calls, or browse the web because it wasn’t hooked up to the network so we don’t have a complete impression yet.

Full details and technical specs can be found at ELSE Mobile.