A brand new device from the folks at Motorola has leaked this weekend. This device for now doesn’t have many details to go along with it, but the picture shows us enough to certainly be interested. This Motorola QWERTY slider running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich headed for the Now Network could be the next Motorola Photon.
Previous reports suggested Motorola is working on a successor to the original Photon and will call it the PHOTON Q 4G LTE. We originally thought the “Q” could stand for quad-core, but now it could also be for the QWERTY keyboard shown above — or both. That name sure is ugly but the phone looks pretty nice if you ask me. I’m not a fan of hardware keyboards these days, but to have a physical keyboard and on-screen navigation keys both could be a good combination.
The leak shows Motorola’s recent design changes that we’ve also seen in the RAZR HD. Running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and having only on-screen navigation keys as Google intended. Having a full 5 row QWERTY keyboard means the device is quite wide, most likely confirming a 4.3 or possible 4.5-inch display. The leakster from AC Forums suggests a qHD display but no details were confirmed other that what we see.
At this point I don’t really see a need for a hardware keyboard, but the original Moto DROID was an awesome phone. I’m sure there’s still a few users that want a keyboard however, so we’ll be sure to keep our eyes out for more details on this rumored device. What do you guys think? Leave the hardware keyboards to the past?
For me the lack of a full physical horizontal slide-out QWERTY keyboard is a deal-breaker. I’m simply not buying a new phone until Samsung or somebody else comes out with one that has an AMOLED screen (that being the other deal-breaker). I’m waiting for well over a year now – I’ll just wait as long as I have to, period.
I hate the inaccuracy of touchscreen typing. When I’m using the internet on my phone and want to send a full-length email, touchscreen typing and the crappy autocorrect that comes with it is just hell. I’ve been waiting for ages now to find an android slider that is good enough to replace my HTC Desire Z…