This afternoon, I finally had a chance to try out the new Palm OS smartphones from GSPDA and PiTech. GSPDA has been selling their G18 and G88 phones in Asia and Europe for a while, and their new Xplore M28 phone is about to be released. PiTech has just produced the Qool QDA-700 phone, which will initially be released in Asia. Both sets of phones have five-way navigators, but neither phone integrates the five-way as well as the palmOne Treo 600 and Treo 650.
The PiTech QDA-700 has a small five-way joystick, similar to the palmOne Zire 71. The device uses the same character codes as used by the original palmOne five-way scheme used on the Tungsten T device. Up and down send the standard vchrPageUp (0x000B) / vchrPageDown (0x000C) keystrokes. Left/right/center send the vchrNavChanged key, with the keyCode bits set to indicate which direction has been pressed.
The GSPDA phones have a five-way pad with a center button and a pair of side buttons. Up/down on the pad sends vchrPageUp and vchrPageDown. Hitting left on the pad sends the code 0x1800, right sends 0x1801, and center sends 0x0107 (vchrConfirm). Up and down on the side buttons send 0x1802 and 0x1803, respectively.