Straight from India comes the first mobile phone that features world's first Alpha keypad, the B5. An Alpha keypad has its keys arranged in ABCD order, just like the Latin alphabet.
Launched by Indian manufacturer
Lava, the B5 “borrows” Blackberry's form factor to its core. In fact, from the pictures you might take it for a Blackberry Bold if not for the Lava logo above the display and the unusual keypad arrangement.
Lava's B5 is a featurephone, as it doesn't run any operating system and seems to be tagged as a mid-budget device.
B5 comes with a standard QVGA TFT 2.2-inch (320x240 pixels resolution) with 262K colors support. It also sports an average 2.0-megapixel camera without flash and
dual SIM capabilities.
As the device targets the Indian market, the B5 also includes an Indian Calendar, as well as the rupee symbol on its keypad.
The mobile phone measures 107.8 x 63 x 12.75mm and weighs 109g (including battery). It is Java enabled and includes
USB support and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 8GB, 2GB microSD card included), as well as 64 MB RAM internal memory.
Other key features of the B5 include: FM radio with recording, 1400 mAh Li-Ion battery, Scheduled SMS, double speakers, Music Equalizer, Bluetooth connectivity, Email, Opera Mini web broser, Contacts Backup, Nimbuzz (MSN, Yahoo messenger, Skype), Call/SMS Blacklist, Auto answer, call recorder, conference call and auto redial.
Surprisingly, the featurephone also comes with some sort of PC Suite application bundled, which offers users the possibility to sync their phone with the PC.
If you're on a trip in
India, or you live there and wanna try it out, B5 can be bought for only 4,399 rupees, which is about $95 USD. The phone is already available through a wide range of dealers around India.
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