BenQ's All-Touchscreen Cell Phone: Not Such a New Idea?

Bloggers are going gaga for BenQ's new concept cell phone: It's basically a big black monolith like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are no actual buttons. The entire front of the phone is instead a touchscreen, and specialized buttons appear based on what you're trying to do. Dialing a number? You get a standard phone keypad. Listening to music? You get volume controls. Taking a picture? You get camera functions. You get the idea.

As a concept design, folks are quick to point out that the "Black Box" isn't coming out any time soon, but if you're interested in the concept, you could actually try a primitive version of a no-buttons phone as way back in 2003. The MyOrigo mydevice smartphone was pretty much the same concept: The phone was an oblong brick with a giant touchscreen in lieu of buttons. The only hard button (a power switch) was found on the side.

In use (and I got to play with one in 2004), the MyOrigo worked pretty well. Observers are quick to complain that touchscreens don't offer any "tactile feedback." That is, unlike your keyboard or regular cell phone, no button physically goes in when you push it, and thus it can be hard to tell if you pushed on the screen hard enough to register the button press. In practice, though, this wasn't really a big deal. The buttons were large enough, the display was bright enough, and the touchscreen was sensitive enough (though not too sensitive) for this all to work out fairly well. With most of today's cell phones, I find that I have to look at the handset while I dial anyway, as the buttons are too small to push strictly by feel alone.

The MyOrigo had another killer feature, and that was the ability to rotate it into landscape mode for web browsing. A motion sensor inside the phone made this translation automatic. I haven't seen anything like it on a cell phone since.

Alas, the MyOrigo mydevice was ahead of its time, as I suspect the BenQ Black Box may also be. Today, MyOrigo is apparently completely out of business, with only a small placeholder image at myorigo.com to remind us of how cool cell phone technology could be.

Are you ready for a phone as unique as this or does the old school still rule?