Dual front is a design concept which allows a device to have two distinctive sides, one for each function. It is most commonly used in camera phones.
The main advantage of using a dual fronted device is the enhanced ease of use by having distinctive functions for each side.
For example, having a mobile phone with a dual front for the camera encourages the user to hold the phone horizontally which reduces the learning curve because the buttons and functions are located in similar places to a common digital camera.[1]
The dual front concept began in 2003 when Sony Ericsson started its camera phone range with the T610 and T630 which could be held comfortably in the style of a real digital camera due to its side-mounted shutter button; they also had rear designs which loosely resembled the design of digital cameras. Sony Ericsson described the design of the T630 as 'Putting an end to phones having a front and a back, the T630 has two sides. One for the camera... the other for telephony...'[2]
With the announcement of the K700i and S700i, Sony Ericsson introduced a new marketing term, "Dual front" to refer to camera phone where the "back" of the handset is styled as the "front" of a digital camera, hence the term of "dual front".[3]
The market responded well to this design and Sharp was the next company to begin designing dual front products, by producing a clamshell phone with a dual front design (Sharp 902).[4] This had not been done before on clamshell phones as it was difficult to find a convenient location to put the camera due to the physical limitations.
Nokia, after observing the continued response towards mobile phones with dual front designs announced the 6111[5] and the 6270/6280 in 2005,[6] all of which had a dual front element to them. They had also previously created a new design which involved the twisting of the top flip in order to create a camcorder like display (as on the 6260).[7] Whilst not strictly dual front, it was later elaborated more to form the N90, N92 and N93.
Samsung's UpStage, released in 2007, features a new form of dual front design, where one side is the phone side and the other side resembles an MP3 player.[8]
Sony Ericsson also used the dual front design in the Japan release, the Sony Ericsson Radiden. On the back it had a separate screen for accessing radio functions.[9]