Pad in My Pocket: The Two Screen Solution
What I want is a functional computer with an internet connection that fits in my pocket. The closest approximations currently available are large screen smartphones, of which the largest, the Dell Streak, has a 5" diagonal screen and no physical keyboard; there are several slightly smaller competitors with 4.3" screens. One reason none of them are larger than that is that they are constrained by the limited size of the pockets of potential purchasers. A 5" screen would be a considerable improvement over the 3.5" screen of my current phone, but still well short of what I want. Samsung's Galaxy Tab, with a 7" screen, comes closer, but it won't fit in my shirt pocket.
Sprint has just announced a new phone from Kyocera with a design that might provide the solution to the problem. The Kyocera Echo has two 3.5" screens. It can be configured as a sort of mini-laptop, with one screen providing the virtual keyboard for the other, or, with the phone opened flat, as a single 4.7" screen.
The breast pocket of my shirt, which is the smallest pocket in which I am likely to carry a phone, is about 3.5" wide and 5" long, so a larger version of the Echo, with individual screens about 3"x4.5", would fit. That gives a combined screen size of 4.5"x6", for a diagonal of about 7.5", a little bigger than the Galaxy Tab.
The Tab itself is said to fit into a pants pocket although not a shirt pocket. Replace its single screen with two of the same size and they combine to about 6"x7". That's roughly the size of the iPad screen—and considerably easier to carry around.
Now if only someone at Kyocera, or Motorola, or Samsung, or HTC, is reading this blog ... .