Pocket-Lint recently discovered a mysterious T-Mobile branded handset from LG in London this week – a slider touchscreen phone with similarities to LG Quantum and LG Optimus, only that it has a split QWERTY keyboard, accommodating a secondary touchpad. The secondary touchpad serves as a shortcut to up to eight apps, only that the first six apps were already pre-filled in.

The mystery phone, however, appears to be a prototype of what could be released in the coming months (speculated this fall). The sliding mechanism isn’t perfect yet; the space between the two halves when the phone is closed is abnormally significant; unlike previously released LG phones, the rear camera has no indication of capability (megapixels); the handset is fatter compared to present-day smartphones; and the Android 1.6 wallpaper is pretty much a giveaway. Aside from the secondary touchpad and the shortcuts it offers, not much is known about the phone, as the sleuths from Pocket-Lint didn’t have much time to toy with it.

LG’s unique slider was brought in, together with other phones intended exclusively for the US market, during a Kineto Wireless-Orange event in London. Kineto Wireless has previously worked with T-Mobile for their Smart WiFi function. A rep from Kineto Wireless reportedly mentionedFlip II as the phone’s name, but there’s a contention with the term ‘flip’ which is used for clamshell phones and not with slider ones. Another guess would be the LG Maxx Q, which was included in the leaked roadmaps of T-Mobile and Sprint slated for a fall release. Some more name guesses: LG Q and LG Optimus Slider.

via Engadget

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Here are the full specs:

• 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
• 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen
• 5.0-megapixel autofocus rear camera with LED flash, 720p HD video recording/playback and image editor
• 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera
• 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Adobe Flash Player support
• Dolby Mobile audio
• Built-in HDMI output
• SmartShare (Supports sharing multimedia content with HDMI-capable displays)
• 16GB microSD card

The phone is $249.99 with a 2 year agreement.

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The 1GHz Snapdragon processor is fast enough to smoothly watch movies in 480 x 800 resolution, and look surprisingly good when projected in the right conditions (dark with a light background). This is great for presentations, watching videos, photos, or web browsing. Here’s what the projector looks like in action:

Now back to the phone itself, it runs on AT&T’s network and features Windows Mobile 6.5. It also has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, fingerprint scanner that is also a D-pad, slide out qwerty keyboard, and every other feature a smartphone should have.

Here’s engadget’s hands on of the phone in action:

Basically this phone is on par with the Touch Pro2 and the likes, but when the add-on projector becomes available (shouldn’t be too long) then this phone will be one of the coolest out there. The price is $99 with a 2 year contract, and the add-on projector will set you back another $180.

Price: $99.99