Pantech's SKY IM-R200 slider sports LCD keypad

You can always count on Korea's Pantech & Curitel to deliver some innovative features in its lineup of SKY handsets, and the new IM-R200 is no different, sporting a unique LCD keypad that must serve other functions as well to make up for its lack of tactility. Besides the fancy second screen, this single-slider (not dual, like the similarly-named R100) also features a two megapixel camera, QVGA display, 116MB of memory supplemented by microSD, and of course all the usual multimedia playback bonanza. We'd break you off a price and release date too, but we don't know them, and unless you're in South Korea, you don't really need to know 'em either.

[Via Akihabara News]

[GJP303 @ Apr 17th 2007 4:29PM]

That is a brilliant idea. Then you can switch between the numeric keypad and music control buttons, or other things like a qwerty keyboard.

[Mischa Lockton @ Apr 17th 2007 4:29PM]

This is kind of silly to me....
the influence of Apple?

[kadajawi @ Apr 17th 2007 4:41PM]

I don't know if this idea makes sense too, but stop that Apple crap. I like Apple, but I think this is going too far. Or were you ironic? Hm...

If at all, I'd see a influence by the Nintendo DS.

[Mischa Lockton @ Apr 17th 2007 4:57PM]

I was not really being ironic, but I was making a joke.
I am no fanboy, but I respect Apple very much.
Their influence is obvious here again.

I think this is a really silly idea, because if both areas are screens, why have them slide apart at all? It seems like they took the iPhone's concept and slapped it into a form factor that does not make very much sense. I personally like my tactile kb found on my Treo 700.

Apple does not always invent the feature; sometimes they popularize it, such as colored or white cases. Their influence is such that most likely your PC would still be beige if not for Macintosh. The DS was out first as a touch screen controlled gadget, yet it wasnt the first touch screen by far. So many companies and previous inventions influence or inspire the latest offerings; but Apple seems to integrate and advance these technologies so well! In this case they are the only company pimping the "multi-touch"

[Kamokazi @ Apr 17th 2007 5:19PM]

Look closely at that second screen. It looks like it's designed to not show fingerprints as much (something that will likely be problematic on the iphone without a good screen protector). Secondly, there is no mention of whether or not the primary screen is actually a touch screen...it wouldn't be a necessity since it doesn't appear to run PalmOS or Windows Mobile-it's just a multimedia cell phone.

Also, Apple was by no means the first company to ditch the beige box. Black/Gray started appearing in some old Acers (Pentium 1's) I know for certain, but it is very likely something predated those.

[kadajawi @ Apr 17th 2007 5:26PM]

Ok. But still I see more influence in the DS (first touchscreen controlled gadget? What about all those PDAs? Palm, WinCE, Apple Newton, etc.?). The DS has 2 displays, one a touchscreen, used for input.

I don't think the second display is of much use except for displaying different keys, but the lack of tactile feedback as you said is a too big trade-off for that (I doubt you can type easily without looking at the "buttons"). Also I think that increases the price quite a bit. On the iPhone and other smartphones it makes sense though, since you can use the keypad display part for other things too, directly click on buttons etc. Using a normal keypad with different icons that can be lit might make more sense... in one mode the button looks like play, in another it looks like 6 e.g.

Btw. I think the only great and new thing on the iPhone is that it has a lot of memory and the interface, which is a nice improvement over other smartphones. But otherwise it's nothing new at all. But I think this is the wrong place for yet another iPhone discussion.

[Jamar @ Apr 17th 2007 6:06PM]

It's a pretty cool phone. At least we might see this phone here in the future; that *was* the point of Helio, wasn't it?

[Conor @ Apr 17th 2007 6:46PM]

Cool it supports Melon........

[Linkdumptube.com @ Apr 17th 2007 10:09PM]

seems like everyone is copying the iphone's design now. lol.

[thumbs @ Apr 18th 2007 12:13AM]

---Why does it need to slide, or for that matter have a second screen if the keypad is just an lcd screen?

[kadajawi @ Apr 18th 2007 12:44AM]

Yeah, I was wondering on that too, but I guess the designers simply wanted to create something where people don't shout "iPhone rip off!". Well, sorry guys, but that's impossible.

[TJ @ Apr 18th 2007 1:20AM]

It could be a touch screen keypad or a graffiti/transcriber input screen. I remember a nokia phone a while ago having something similar, its supposed to input some chinese characters.

[Darren Wilson @ Apr 18th 2007 5:36AM]

Those claiming an iPhone rip off are way off the mark. If anything the iPhone is a rip off of older devices. When you think that HC have been making touch screen phones for many years now which have more functionality than the iPhone (and you don't specifically have to use a stylus with the HTC devices either if you set it up right). All Apple have done is to take a basic 2.5G handset and put a touch screen on it. What is ground breaking or pioneering about that? It doesn't do anything different to my 4 year old O2 XDAII (HTC Himalaya) does (in fact the iPhone does LESS), apart from going to cost an arm & a leg even on a high price tariff.
Now get off Steve Job's backside as he needs to empty his rectal cavity of fanboy juice, and look at all sides of things rather than wearing blinkers.

[Wild Turkish @ Apr 18th 2007 12:26PM]

I don't really understand the concept either other than the fact that they're going for something new and "original". This is by no means an iPhone copy. If you're going to say that then the iPhone obviously ripped off LG's Prada phone, which I'm not saying it did. I'd rather see this thing come out and fail than have a stagnation of phone designs.

[o2inc @ Apr 23rd 2007 4:07PM]

It's funny how everyone is saying they are duplicating iPhone's designs when it's obvious the the LG Prada phone went into design first and Apple had a million different versions of their iPhone before somehow they decided on the brick touchscreen one right before the LG Prada phone was announced.

I say apple is duplicating LG's design ques...but thats open for debate by the Steve Jobs lovers.

[CINDY @ Jul 9th 2007 3:36PM]

Does anyone know where i can find the software for this phone?