One of the coolest things about the new HTC P3300 (Artemis) is the lack of directional pad buttons. Instead there’s a combination trackball and iPod-like click wheel. The silver ridged circle at the bottom of the device can be rotated with your thumb. Rotating clockwise moves the focus down, while counterclockwise moves it up. Each click represents one unit of movement. The best part is you can rotate this at higher speeds than you could multi-press a D-pad button, making for much easier and faster one-handed scrolling.
The other part of this new interface is the small trackball in the middle. By default, rolling this in any direction moves the focus in that direction. Also pressing down on the center of the ball performs the selected action. If you activate “Mouse Mode” for the trackball, a mouse pointer appears on the screen and the trackball acts like a mouse where you have to push around the pointer, and the press down on the trackball to click the buttons. Take a look at the video below and see how it works.
Originally published on Pocketnow on November 9, 2006. More Hardware articles from the Pocketnow archive.