Motorola has been on-again-off-again with the Evoke QA4 touchscreen slider phone although all signals seem to point to an impending release.  There hasn't been an official announcement yet, but the handset recently made a surprise appearance up on Motorola's site.

Originally approved by the FCC back in September of last year, the phone ended up shelved indefinitely after failing to pass carrier testing (rumored to be US Cellular).  Today, it's back up on the radar, with supporting FCC documents available for public viewing.

As you can see from the image, it now looks a bit more attractive than the original unofficial photos, especially with the updated keyboard in tow.  The specs, however, remain the same for the most part.  The latest version, which is most likely the one rolling out in the near future, packs a 2.8-inch touchscreen LCD, CDMA/EVDO radio, 2 megapixel camera, aGPS, Bluetooth and a microSD slot.  On the software side of things, it offers a landscape QWERTY virtual keyboard, widget support and various Google apps (Contacts, Picasa and YouTube are confirmed so far).

There's no mention of an accelerometer as earlier rumored, although I can't imagine the Evoke QA4 coming out without one.  Motorola's keeping mum so I guess we'll have to sit and wait this one out.

Photo Credit: PhoneScoop

I've never been a big fan of numeric keypad sliders.  If you're going to fit something that slips out, might as well make it a full QWERTY interface, right?  The Samsung Tocco Ultra, however, is new keypad slider with some pretty impressive hardware that should make even a dogged slide-phone hater take notice.

Sporting a brushed metal finish, markedly slim frame and aesthetics that looked cutting edge three years ago (sorry), the phone's centerpiece is a 2.8 inch AMOLED touchscreen display with one of the sharpest and clearest outputs among today's generation of handsets.  It comes with Samsung's TouchWiz interface, which isn't perfect, but works well enough to make navigating through the phone relatively pain-free.  I especially love dropping shortcuts on the home screen, which comes few and far between among non-smartphone releases, and the correct recognition of a few intentionally inaccurate touch motions.

If you took a look at the Tocco Ultra's pic and thought that this has to be a cameraphone, you're right.  In fact, it's very attractive on the optics end, packing an 8 megapixel camera along with an assortment of high-end features, including a surprisingly capable Macro mode for extreme close-up shots and dual LED flash.  It fits a dedicated camera button on the side, while the rest of the features can be controlled via the touch interface.  Video has been especially improved, allowing for frame rates of up to 30 fps at VGA resolution.

As with other high-end feature phones, it comes with HSDPA connectivity, GPS and media playback.  I've always found surfing the web unappealing without a decent QWERTY keyboard and my disdain continues with this phone.  Media playback is pretty good, though, especially for the fact that it supports DivX and Xvid codecs.  Memory is a paltry 80 MB but you can always plop in a microSDHC card.

Overall, if you want a solid camera phone, this is a good unit to look at.    It's undoubtedly Samsung's strongest camera-centric handset to date, with a nice suite of features to round up its overall usability.  Currently, the Samsung Tocco Ultra is only available in Germany but should be rolled out to a wider audience by month's end.

Photo Credit: DealGiant

There's something to be said about the way carriers are coping with the current economic climate.  This week alone, we've seen a good number of slider QWERTY phones up for release.  Obviously, simple feature phones are getting more attention than they otherwise would under better financial climates.

We've already seen Samsung's TouchWiz UI on a couple of non-smartphone QWERTY devices as well Nokia's latest XpressMusic release.  A few more handsets geared towards the text-obsessed crowd that rolled out the last two days include Virgin Mobile's Kyocera X-tc, Sprint's LG Rumor 2 and Alltel's LG Banter.  For the price these things go, they actually look pretty good and will make useful backup phones in case you dropped the iPhone at the pawnshop for some emergency cash.

The Kyocera X-tc sports a QVGA display, a 1.3 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth and a microSD slot, all in a 4.37 x 2.05 x 0.68 inch frame.  Available now for $99 with no contract, it comes with email, Facebook and MySpace support onboard.

Sprint, on the other hand, is throwing up the LG Rumor 2 starting March 15th for $49.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate.  Specs include a QVGA display, a 1.3 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, microSDHC support and on-board GPS.  It will come in two colors, Black Titanium and Vibrant Blue.

Sporting some resemblance to the Rumor2, the LG Banter has also been released, this time under a two-year plan with Alltel.  It fits a two-inch QVGA LCD, a 1.3 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth and a microSD slot, along with AOL and Yahoo! messaging on board.  Alltel is pricing it at $50 after mail-in rebates.

Photo Credits: BGR, SlashGear