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Jan 9, 2008 19:06

One cell phone demo you will not see at CES 2008--The Dopod S1

Posted by RickM

While all you chumps are laughing it up over in Vegas at CES, you're missing out on all the big announcements over here in China. Folks, here is the very latest ~~Chinese~~ (Thanks to John for the correction in the comments) cell phone to take my living room by storm.

I give you the Dopod "Don't call me iPhone" S1:

Here is a fascinating video demo of the Dopod S1. And by fascinating I mean way stupid:

That is easily one of the poorest animations I've seen since Steamboat Willie.

Now compare that with the real-life demo that they've done. Somehow the motion of the thumb doesn't quite sync with the motion of the screen at times. He can't possibly be sweeping his thumb over a video playing on screen, could he?

Update: Apparently the phone is developed by HTC, and the interface in the second video is the real deal. But man, whoever produced that first animated video should be iPunched in iPhace!

Cheers to 168.fr for the tip on this one. Brilliant Web site.

Further reading: Check another recent Chinese iPhone clone at my PandaPassport blog.

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johnchan

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johnchan says...
Hey Rick,

That's the HTC Touch you've got there, a Windows Mobile phone that's well covered on CNET Asia asia.cnet.com.... Dopod Asia was bought over by HTC but the China operations remain. Its products are still provided by HTC though.

I can verify that the second video is not a fake "thumb on video". The "TouchFLO" interface on this phone works as advertised, but I think the guy doing it on his S1 was going to fast and it was lagging so it looks a little out of sync.

I don't want to sound like I'm defending HTC--but I do feel the interface on the S1 (or HTC Touch) is pretty decent. It lets you avoid some of the clunky default Windows Mobile menus. I spoke to the guy in charge of R&D at the company, and the timing of this TouchFLO interface suggests that it was in development before Mr Jobs swept the world off its feet with the iPhone. And unlike the obvious clones out there, this one looks nothing like the iPhone's menus.

Jan 10, 2008 11:21