Emblaze Else – the hands-on

It took a bit of time to separate the Israelis from the Japanese at the Access Co. event – while the latter were busily guarding their booze, the first didn’t know about us until about 19:30 that day.

Don’t ask me how it worked, but I suddenly managed to get my hands onto an Else. Here are two shots showing it next to an XPERIA X1:

It has two screens: a little status OLED at the top, and the large and pretty nice LCD below:

The device’s most notable feature is its faecher-like menu. If you tap an option, it slides open and reveals its sub options:

Here is a shot of the address book:

And a shot of the main menu:

An on-site project manager told me that the stylusless Else is theoretically able to run Palm OS software. However, this requires users to download the SDK for the device – no SDK, no GHost. When bought, it will support LiMo apps – nothing else.

In the end, the Emblaze Else is an impressive device – but it is not a follow-up to the Treos or Palm PDAs in any way. The machine is beautiful, but is completely different to a PalmOS box. Its main intention is entertainment…and this is a job which it can likely do well…

P.S. To the Emblaze manager wondering where I was heading 20 minutes before the end of the congress: I was running to the medical center…

Related posts:

1. Emblaze Else – the next ALP smartphone project
2. Emblaze is in trouble
3. Emblaze Else – hands-on
4. Emblaze kills the ELSE
5. Access on the Emblaze Else