Fresh out of meeting room 310 West here at the Orange County Convention Center (which, by the way, is an utter paean to industry in and of itself), some of you out there will probably get mad at me if I wash my hands before lunch ... for I have held the as yet unreleased Motorola q9h smartphone.

I'll wash 'em anyway - it's just a phone after all.  But I wound up sitting next to a Moto exec who saw me snapping photos as another Moto suit demo'd the Q's successor on the big screen at the front of the room.  And the next thing I knew I was holding a pre-release version of the rounder, more powerful successor to The World's Thinnest QWERTY phone and hearing all about the new form factor ("We call it SCLPL, the old one we called RAZR"), new shortcut buttons ("There's one for Web, one for Email, one for Camera, one for Music, and one we haven't programmed yet"), and beefed up processor and memory (96MB onboard RAM), not to mention the roomier keyboard with it's big square buttons ("Try it ... see, it's much more tactile than the Q.").  I was impressed, even if he scurried out of the panel discussion before I could snap a photo ("We'll do it outside, not in here ... just find me later, alright?").

Still, I was impressed - the New Q definitely looks to improve upon a few of the shortcomings of its predecessor, though I do wish they'd moved that backspace key down to the QWERTY pad where it belongs.  Every time I use the Q to write a message, I inevitably hit "p" instead of backspace at least once.  Hopefully I'll catch the q9h at Moto's booth (or even run into that one guy again), as it won't be on the market for another month in so ... and initially only in Europe, at that.

While the fate of where I sat meant that Motorola stole the show for me, execs from Nokia, HTC, RIM (Blackberry), Palm, and HP all gave a brief talk about their handsets and strategies in addition to sitting on a panel moderated by Laptop Magazine.  HP showed a new VoIP-capable iPaq smartphone that caught my eye for its tiny form-factor and Wi-Fi voice and data capabilities.  Nokia talked about pbx solutions that can save businesses big money on international calls by routing voice over dedicated IP lines instead of costly transatlantic cellular paths.  HTC showed their new Advantage handset.  Palm talked about simplicity. 

And then, of course, when the panel moderator asked everyone gave the requisite iPhone answer: "Hype is good for all of us.  Consumers will decide.  Yes, Apple will take a share of the market, but their niche is a little different than ours."  Ah yes, the silent presence of Apple is once again felt throughout the wireless industry, even here in the land of oranges.