There's a lot of discussion about the official announcement that the "belt" is going to be implemented in future Blackberry smartphones. I've a Q10 myself and the only thing i miss is the ability to edit text, that can be fixed by assigning the Vol.up and Vol.down the responsibility to move the cursor back and forward when you see this blue circle on your screen:
In my opinion we don't need the Send key, the End/Power key, the Menu key or even the Escape key included in the "belt" of previous BlackBerry phones. But we do need something to make possible to edit text on our QWERTY BB10 phones because it is so arduous and painful to place the cursor where it needs to be that sometimes we feel like we should just throw our phones against the wall.
So this is the Q20 concept that i came up with:
so let me explain my idea, on top of the keyboard we have a slide trackpad that will provide functions like:
- Send(swipe left to right)
- Back(swipe right to left)
-Move the cursor horizontally when we tap the screen on a text box
----------------------Trackpad version
I just realised that we need the trackpad, i've been reading some posts here and there and the trackpad will definitely improve our browsing experience, we will be able to activate mouseover menus and click tiny little areas that we can't be precise with our fingers. People are referring to the End key as a must have and i've to agree with them, it will be much easier to end a call or swap between calls.
So this is my trackpad version of the Q20:
black version
silver version
briefcase version
That would be all thumbs up if you like it
Last edited by joao_malveiro; 03-01-14 at 05:36 AM.
Reason: I embraced the trackpad
How does this address the issue of not being able to terminate a phone call right now? How about being able to navigate a web page, and click on that tiny little item next to those 6 other tiny little items? Trackpad is IDEAL for that. Why are so many people dead set against the idea of buttons and a trackpad? I don't think your design concept makes sense. Trackpads and buttons do not have to be large. They can all be very slim. The trackpad will still track as long as you have more of whatever you're sliding over it, and there's no reason why buttons have to be any wider than the volume buttons already on the phone. I bet the belt is going to be no wider than 3/16ths.
to terminate a phone call just swipe right to left, different functions according to the applications you have maximised on your screen, i believe this is much better than 4 buttons and a trackpad that do the same we can do with gestures on the screen.
I too have difficulty using the cursor-circle (is there an official name for it?) and that is the main reason I'm excited about the toolbelt.
But as you say: there isn't much use for the menu/back key since the OS already provides for those. I would like the physical answer/hangup keys however. Declining an incoming call by swiping just doesn't give the level of satisfaction