This is what I wish the next Athena looked like

[techntrek]

Its a 2-year-old concept design from Lenovo. Touchscreen, decent keyboard, widescreen. Just put the guts behind the screen (like the current Athena) so the keyboard can stay at home at times, and make sure it has a private earpiece and vibrate and I'd be all over it.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/16/lenovo-leaks-pocket-yoga-mystery-netbook-pics/

[jimmunsw]

Bro ,
Yes , i saw this on Gizmodo too , very nice n pocketable too , best if made with a normal speaker earpiece on middle of right hand side and a mic hole on the left side - this will make the next athena replacement to be a very saleable pda device and will retain it's status as Pda King again .... Htc chief designer for Athena have probably seen this or thought of it before , however whether he like to follow the crowd or not , it's another matter , somehow these high ranking designers - they have weird thinking and sometime the end result can be funny or out of place or down right impractical ! Let's see how this taiwanese designer will fare , i saw one picture gsmarena and the next replacement is only a bit cosmetic changes - still with magnetic slim keyboard but pda itself may have bumped up inside of everything overall , still this lenovo design is quite good - just like nokia communicator - i think ... thks for reading , cheers
jimmunsw :)

[techntrek]

yeah, I've seen the pics of the Thoth and its the same old, same old. A shame, our platform really needs an overhaul. Going with the 16:9 aspect ratio (like the Lenovo in my link) instead of the 4:3 like on the Athena would have several advantages.

1. Easy to hold as a phone; the Athena can be held as a phone but its not comfortable or natural.
2. Full-width browsing; you could see 1/4 of a page vertically at a time... and all of it horizontally. No horizontal scrolling necessary.
3. Proper aspect ratio for many movies.
4. The same total screen area for applications (4"x3" screen vs. 5"x2.5")
edit: adding #5
5. A much-better keyboard, maybe with seperate numeric and punctuation keys

[tovarish]

Also with a wide screen like that one can have two views at the same time (for eg in calender or a browser).

[lifelion]

Dear Santa Klaus,

For Thoth, I'd like
- 16/9 is definetly more usable for a mobile device
- USB host 2.0 (no proprietary connector)
- At least 1024x768 VGA output (720p maybe)
- HDMI or DP would be nice for 720p
- D-pad at the back of the device
- 1 external SDXC slot and 1 internal (could be microSDXC)
- mechanical connection to the keyboard if that could save 40g
- no slylus

Xie xie