We weren’t exactly blown away when we Sierra Wireless announced their Voq cellphone running Microsoft’s Smartphone operating system. Besides looking sorta cheap and not having Bluetooth or a built-in digital camera, after actually playing with one of the phones last week at Microsoft’s Mobius conference (disclosure, Redmond covered our airfare and hotel) we also discovered that we weren’t particularly impressed with the one feature of the phone that we thought we would like: its fold-out QWERTY keyboard. Upon closer inspection, the keyboard isn’t very sturdy and lacks a backlight, which wouldn’t be a big deal except that the keys are pretty hard to read, even in a relatively well-lit room. Apparently, we’re not the only ones who feel that way; on his blog Om Malik posted an email from one of his readers trashing the phone and its design.
