John WaltoncloseAuthor Information: Name: John Walton About: John Walton is the Managing Editor of DroidDog.com and loves where Android is headed. He is also a Smartphone Editor over at PhoneDog. He spends too much time on Twitter.See Authors Posts (799)

ZTE recently unveiled the Smooth: an Android 1.6 slider with a portrait QWERTY and 2.8″ QVGA display, and it looks like the response is unanimous: It’s a bad knock-off of Palm’s Pre. It is nice to see the form factor popping up, even if it is mot likely for China this august. It’s only a matter of time before another OEM stretches out into this Palm-ish realm, and I hope the next to do it goes for a mig-to-high-range device, as opposed to this decidedly low-end entry into to the race to rip off the Pre. I’ve never been a fan of the portrait hardware keyboards – even when that’s all we really had. But you know, diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.

Via Android Central