Touchscreens are so 2009. The trend this year seems to be to cram as many input mechanisms into the device as possible. At first glance the Motorola Backflip looked like an attractive proposition, with a nice reverse-clamshell hinging feature that allows the handset to rest on a desk and for easy viewing of on-screen media.
But in addition to an extra full QWERTY keyboard the device also features what Motorola calls ‘BactTrack Nav”. This is a touchpad on the reverse side of the touchscreen. Why would I use this feature over the touchscreen? I fail to come-up with a single use-case where this track pad would offer benefit over the touchscreen or keypad. Does the user really need three input mechanisms? I’m guessing not.
But the Backflip was nothing compared to Docomo’s separable phone. 
At first glance the handset looks like a slightly overweight slider (think Nokia Communicator circa early part of the decade). However the display can be completely detached from the QWERTY keypad to act as a normal touchscreen phone, and can be connected to the keypad via Bluetooth for remote operation (ie: the keyboard acts as a remote control for content, photographs etc). Again, so far so good, but then the stand staff slid out a further numerical keypad from underneath the QWERTY keyboard. No wonder the thing was so bulky. A touchscreen, QWERTY and numerical keypad.
In both cases, are there really valid use cases or are these just an exercise in engineering prowess and a chance to expose potentially licensable technologies to the market?
