Back at Mobile World Congress in February, the mobile UI gurus at TAT showed off
their interpretation of a dual-screen phone interface using TI's
powerhouse OMAP4 testbed. Seemed a little pie-in-the-sky at the time,
but frankly, the concept device being shown off by Fujtisu at CEATEC
this week -- created with TAT's involvement, it turns out -- seems
virtually ready for production. Or the hardware did, anyway; the
software was spartan by comparison, obviously designed to call out a
few key use cases where having two giant, glorious 960 x 480 displays
right next to each other might come in handy. We were shown browser and
email list scrolling across both displays -- boring, if not obvious --
but what really piqued our interest was a cool photo sharing feature
whereby you fling photos you want to share from a gallery on the bottom
display to a list of contacts on the top one -- very TAT, if we do say
so ourselves. Both displays can be rotated between portrait and
landscape, creating either a nicely-sized clamshell or a gigantic flip,
not an uncommon shape among Japanese phones. Indeed, given the form
factor, the entirely-Japanese interface, and Fujitsu's history, we're
sure this was designed entirely with the Japanese domestic market in
mind -- and we wouldn't be at all surprised to see it show up in a
retail capacity there within a year or so. Follow the break for video.
