Steve continues his exploration of the world of text input and observes that the presence of a useable QWERTY keyboard can actually change how you use a smartphone. While not for everyone the increasing range of keyboard equipped device open up new usage scenarios for smartphone users.
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I hate you steve!! First you get me all depressed about how low the ram is on my N91 and now the lack of qwerty keybord....all this after i got rid of my mda vario.
I agree with you, i've always had a preference for qwerty devices evr since the nokia 5510 (pre smartphone days) and even your grid recommended the vario and E61 according to my preferences. One does get quite some flexibility with a full keyboard and its just sheer convinience.
Anyways, i'm not a power user anymore and i'm quite happy with the compromise an internal 4gb drive with fine audio quality against a qwerty keyboard.
p.s.. i dont really hate ya! just watch out at the next pub meet tho. 😊
I've been using mostly keyboarded devices for some time now, since the last PDA I had without a keyboard was a (long since disappeared) Sony Clie N700C.
Its successor, the Sony Clie NX70V had a full-featured (but poorly designed and almost unusable with the clamshell design of that PDA) keyboard, but I was still mostly using Graffiti at that time.
Then I jumped in the Smartphone train, and got myself a Treo 600, with a really nice keyboard and input scheme.
The next PDA I got was a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000, and it's keyboard was nice, almost as good as the Psion 3a keyboard I had back in time.
I won't mention the three months I spent using a Fossil PalmOS PDA watch, keyboardless, of course, as I would never have entered any text at all on such a tiny device, but the Qtek 9100 had a very decent keyboard, even if the OS really wasn't my cup of tea...
So now, when I decided to see what Symbian could do for me, it's without any hesitation that I wen for the E61 with its azerty keyboard (yeah, I happen to be French and to have a lot of French text to deal with, so sticking with a French-localized keyboard was the safest choice... <vbg>😉.
And Steeve, I do agree with you, the full keyboard (vs T9-style input) is really what makes the difference between "productive" and "gadget" style of use. Not that smartphones that lack a keyboard are just toys, mind you, but if you really use them a lot to enter text in true mobile situations, like a road warrior, then having a builtin keyboard (preferably one that can be used with a single hand, at that) is a blessing when compared to bluetooth separate keyboards or no keyboard at all.
Too bad that the "business" aspect of the full keyboard means that Nokia got rid of the digicam on the E61, as I would really have liked to get both, but in the end, if I have to chose, the builtin keyboard wins without the slightest doubt!
Like "Orophin Anwarunya" said, I think I�m not a power user equally. But between N70 and T9 or 9500 and is Qwerty, I prefer the first. For me is more fast... just an opinion. Maybe, E70 is the best of two, some days we can use T9, other days Qwerty. I�m still thinking about E70🙄
I think adapting the gulwing keyboard to a smartphone format of the E70 was the best idea ever and they should do more like that.
I became a power user back when I had a 6600. I must say that I eventually became a very fast T9 typist, having crunched out emails by the truck load while out in the field. But T9 is just a frustration in the end as typos will happen, no matter how fast you can do it.
Now I have E70 and love it all the way. The qwerty keyboard does take some getting used to but, boy, once you have it, you really have it! Probably I dont type any faster than with T9 but at least I know that my messaging is cleaner with much less errors.