Device Arena

It’s been a while since we first heard about BenQ Siemens SL98 phone with a novel sliding screen.

BenQ SL98 was clearly an early prototype and with all the financial woes at BenQ Siemens cellphone unit in Germany, I thought that we’ll never see this phone again.

Well, we still may not see finished SL98 model shipping, but if you want to try whether the concept has any potential, you can head to German E-bay auction, where several working prototypes of BenQ Siemens SL98 are listed:

The phone comes with a working, but not yet very stable firmware.

BenQ SL98 specs include:

1.8″ QVGA (240×320 px) 262K color display,

1.3 mpx camera

Bluetooth

64 MB of internal memory

microSD memory card slot

600 mAh battery for 5 hrs of talk and 12 days of stand-by time

dimensions: 84×48×15.3 mm

These phones are probably the clearance sales from the bankrupt division and/or disgruntled employees.

But BenQ still is in the mobile handset business and has probably retained the rights to the phones developed in Germany. So we’ll have to wait some more to see whether BenQ SL98 reverse slider was shelved or is still on track for a better future.

Unwired View