HP launches answer to iPhone

HP today unveiled the iPaq smartphone rumoured on the web to be its answer to Apple's touch-driven iPhone. But though the iPaq Data Messenger (DM) has a touch screen, it is more like the Android-based G1 in that it has a slide-out hard keyboard.
A companion model, the iPaq Voice Messenger (VM), is as it name suggests targeted more at people who use the phone more for voice than for texting or emails.

But Neil Dagger, business manager of HP's wireless personal systems group, said the devices were design to appeal to both the consumer and business markets.

The DM keyboard has surprisingly large keys and, on a cursory test at least, seemed rather better than that on the G1.

The VM, too, has quite a novel keyboard, shrinking a qwerty layout two letters to a key on a five-by-four number pad. A couple of Sony Ericsson phones (the M600i and M610i) used something similar but they relied on you rocking the key to the right or left to get the right letter; the VM gives a choice of predictive text, where you select from the machine's guesses, and multi-clicking.

Both models use a nifty optical navigate button that tracks vertical and horizontal movements and which you push to select.

Both will be available on contract through Vodaphone, or from HP at £333 for the VM and £399 for the DM – both prices inc Vat.