It all began with the HP Jornada series of Pocket PCs. HP added a secret feature to their Pocket PCs which allowed them to operate in landscape mode instead of the default portrait mode. This means that instead of displaying in the normal 240 pixels x 320 pixels format, the Jornadas are able to display in the wide-format (320 pixels x 240 pixels). Here, take a look at what I mean :-

As you can see, it's easier to read in landscape mode than in portrait mode. That's because the human eye scans horizontally better than it does vertically. But if it looks better in landscape mode, why do they make Pocket PCs in the portrait form?

Well, for one thing, it's easier to hold a Pocket PC and to store it when it's vertical. Also, I guess they figured that people would be more used to something that looks and feels like a small notepad (which is vertical) instead of something different. So, until the day arrives when they can make a expandable Pocket PC like the really neat PDAs you see in Earth : Final Conflict, I doubt we will see a Pocket PC in the landscape form factor.

There are also other reasons why you won't see a Pocket PC in a landscape form factor yet but we will touch on them later in the article, when we examine the usability of the landscape mode.