In a smartphone market where user experience is king, the First Else could become the next must-have.
Unfortunately, the First Else suffers from an awkward name, and an even more awkwardly-named manufacturer, Else, formerly known as Emblaze (so that's Else's First Else). But Engadget got some hands-on time with the smartphone, due in the second quarter of next year, and was impressed.
The operating system, based on Access Linux Platform 3.0, has a futuristic look, with cool blue tones against a black backdrop. As you can see in this video, everything moves along smoothly, originating from a menu that fans out along the right-hand side of the screen. Holding a finger on any of the main options, such as "Phone" or "Diary," brings up a subset of menu options, and letting go of the finger on one of those options selects it. There's also a button panel on the phone's right side for fast navigation.
The OS puts a strong emphasis on moving points of interest to the center of the phone, and highlighting a photo or a contact brings up contextual options for what to do, such as sharing a photo, placing a call or sending a text message. One feature that really impressed me was the ability to answer the phone in silent mode, sending a message to the caller to find out whether it's an urgent matter or can be addressed later. That would come in handy during meetings. An app store is in the works, but as with so many others, the question is how many developers will contribute.
For hardware, the First Else has the same TI OMAP 3430 found in Motorola's Droid and Palm's Pre, plus an 854x480 3.5-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen, a 5-megapixel camera with video and a battery that supposedly outlasts the iPhone 3GS by an hour. There's no word yet on storage capacity.
For now, the First Else is an exciting prototype from an obscure Israeli company, but I'm excited to see if it can transition into an actual product.
