The First Else reinvents the wheel: Hands-on photos with the smart phone outsider

The First Else is thinking so far outside the box, its name is totally made up of adjectives. Nouns themselves are too old-school for Else, an Israeli company that hopes to have its first phone on British and European shelves in the middle of 2010.

The phone, which is called the First Else, just to torture us, has started from scratch with a Linux-based user interface with some cool-sounding innovations. If a call interrupts an important game of Modern Warfare, for example, you can press a button to ask the caller to press '*' if the call is urgent, or '#' if it can wait till after the next checkpoint. Recording calls is encouraged -- there's a record button on the screen while you're in a call, you can listen to recordings as you browse through the call log, and the camera button works as a record button when the phone is lying face-down.

When it comes to hardware, this touchscreen smart phone makes more claims than a particularly deluded boxer. At today's launch, Else said the Linux-based phone is a camera as good as a Canon, a sat-nav as good as a TomTom, and a Spartan king as good as Leonidas from 300, or something -- it was dark, but we definitely saw Gerard Butler in his pants.

We can't yet say if the First Else is as good as the Scotsman in his skivvies until we have a proper hands-on with the phone, but click 'Continue' to be introduced to the First Else.