Smartphone users just don’t know what they want. One of the biggest, loudest complaints about all-touchscreen phones like the iPhone is its lack of a hardware keyboard, and now a survey shows Pre users most want a soft keyboard.
The survey shows that users like the hardware keyboard but don’t like sliding it out every time they want to type something. Certain Android devices have both soft and hardware keyboards, but they’re very much in the minority. It’s an interesting problem for Palm, whose rumored next WebOS device, the Eos, features a fixed hardware keyboard but a much smaller screen. Still, Palm wouldn’t have too difficult a time updating the Pre’s firmware with a soft keyboard—after all, Android did it already.
Despite Palm having added the QWERTY keyboard in response to gripes about touch-only devices like the iPhone, many users want a software keyboard like Apple’s, as Palm’s design gives them no choice but to use the hardware solution. The opinion holds even for those who chose the Pre for the physical input.
Adapting the design might be difficult for Palm, which designed the Pre and webOS with the assumption that a physical keyboard would be present and free up space onscreen for more data. The Eos may partially address the problem by including a fixed physical keyboard, although it should shrink the touchscreen as a consequence.
Apple has long insisted on a virtual-only iPhone keyboard as it lets the company adapt to non-English languages with a single phone model and can be updated with new features without having to revamp the hardware at the same time. It also saves users from having to memorize two-key combinations for special characters.
Beyond the keyboard, Strategy Analytics has still encountered many who were “impressed” with other elements of the Pre, including the concept of using cards for real multitasking; it behaves “like a PC,” the researchers have been told. They also liked Synergy, the contact management platform that merges data from the phone, Facebook and Google and links it to the calendar and other apps.
More of this news at Electronista.
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