In search of the QWERTY king

For me the qwerty King is stil the 9210 . Buttons souplesse , space in between the keys , very intuitive . Of course all the shotcuts like Ctrl +

😊 Regards jApi NL

I have used e90, e75 and e71 and I found e71 better than all of these. e90 and e75 were too wide for comfort and the whole process of sliding or opening the keyboard kills the purpose of replying to the text or email fast. Also the tactile feedback was not that great on e75 and the black e90. E71 is just perfect for two hands use or single hand use. My vote goes for e71 followed by e75.

I find the size of the E90 just fine, if they want to make it smaller, make it a little bit less thick the rest is fine.

The E75 is just not a replacement of the E90. I am still waiting and waiting and waiting, but nothing until now is coming. Yes hardware wise there are a few now already on the marker or coming but those are all WinMob devices.. 😞

Why is the E75 not a replacement? Screen resolution.. I will not get a phone that has a smaller screen resolution then my E90.. Best thing would be is a E75 with a touchscreen 800x480 resolution on the front.. That i would buy.

Why do i want a big resolution? Simple i think all the oohh and the aahh for example with the iphone that can zoom in and out of webpages is just a result of a hack around the fact that you have a small resolution. On my e90 i can pretty much few any pages that i want because of the 800 pixels.. i never have the need to zoom. I dont want to zoom

I think this also demonstrates how hard it is to quantify a good keyboard. I'd rate the E71 and E75 on a similar level (and unlike many I never got on that well with the E90 keyboard).

For me the E71 is among the 'best' because of the design constraints involved. The E75 and N97 are not noticeably better despite having more room to play with (albeit limited by slide design).

The N97 isn't great, but I haven't found nearly as bad as some reviews seem to suggest. Like any of these devices there are compromises involved. I find it fits comfortably into my hands for two thumbed typing.

Once I've got use to a keyboard I find relatively little difference in speeds (+/- 10%). I'm definitely quicker on QWERTY than T9 though.

while the math may show that the e90 is king, in terms of real world use... i found the e90 uncomfortable to use because it was difficult to reach the keys in the middle, possible, but difficult. i personally found the width of the e61i but hated the spongy keys. if they combine that width with the tactile feedback of the keys on the e71. i think that would be the device for me.

Although you've done your best to be objective and semi-scientific, I reckon keyboards (especially small ones) are quite subjective.

Moving from an E71 to an N97, my larger than average thumbs are finding it easier to hit the right keys on the N97 due to the larger gap between the keys. So although the 'feel' of the E71 was nicer, I make fewer mistakes on the N97.

Having a standard/non-standard layout is a bit of a red herring IMHO. If you actually use one phone for a week or two exclusively and do a fair bit of typing, you get used to the layout. It took me about half a day to get accustomed to the N97s space bar on the right, but every review talks about that as if it was the work of satan.

This is difference between owning a phone long-term and being in a position where you swap from one to another often (I also think this is why the iPhone is much lauded in reviews but not by the real world users I know - easy to pick up and use, but shortcomings only really become apparent after weeks of onwership).

Quote: Yes, I'm sure that some people can work up a real sweat inputting text using just the number keypad, sometimes even without looking

Lol, yea i can type without looking using N95 8GB, really comfortable, but can't be as fast as qwerty ones..

I reckon E71 one's really comfortable even though the keys are a bit small, i use my fingernails most of the time to type and give me faster inputs
i wonder if its possible to type on qwerty phones without looking just like one T9 keypad =)

Having owned e61i and e71 i'd say the keyboard on e71 is much better. I havent done the measurement but I'd be really surprised if your travel distance estimate is even right. On top of that the tactile feel of the keys makes a huge difference. Trying to type on e61i keyboard after using e71 is a pain (and I used and enjoyed using e61i for two years).

The only thing e61i keyboard has on e71 is the size and spacing. However, I find the tradeoff toward one handed use a plus since I do quite a bit (more than i should) of typing while driving.

I'm very surprised at his 'informed comment' (informed how?) because I think he's wrong.

First, the iPhone factor will attract the less well off to cheaper iPhone-like devices and this will encourage manufacturers to create more such devices, finding cheaper ways to produce them and bringing the prices down.

Second, you only have to read the reviews of touch-screen phones to find that, once people are used to them, they prefer on-screen keyboards to buttons.

Thirdly, screen space is more important now as people use the web more on phones. In fact, for many people, the 'phone' is primarily an Internet device and a phone as a secondary function. How often do you use you phone for calls compared with other functions? If you need a bigger screen you have to get rid of the buttons or use a complex, expensive sliding or folding construction.

So, people will end up with keyboard-less phones because they look cool, are easier to use and have bigger screens.

I'm torn as to what I should replace my N95 classic with, later this year. So, yesterday I wandered along to the Nokia shop for a fondle, typing a short poem into the notes app on N97, E71 and E75.

I found the N97 keyboard far too fiddly - and in particular, having to use the Fn key to access even basic things like an apostrophe would drive me mad. It may be find for those to whom punctuation is an anachronism, but as a writer, I'm not about to start sending sub-literate emails to my clients. The space bar wasn't as much of an issue as I'd imagined, but it's the punctuation that rules it out for me.

The E71 was pretty reasonable, but took a while to get up to speed, and I think I'd need to spend longer with it to be absolutely sure - I shall look forward to the E72, though, which does look like it may be a pretty reasonable step up from my N95.

My initial thoughts on seeing photos of the E75 were that it would be odd typing on a completely flat keyboard, but in fact I found it the best of the three, and it's actually a very tempting proposition - if it weren't quite so expensive. It might actually be my ideal device (that's what Steve's matrix says, too); a proper keyboard for quick texting or making phone calls, and the slide-out qwerty really is usable for when I might need to do lengthier emails or note-taking.

It's interesting, because it wasn't really a form factor I'd considered, and the E75 wasn't even really on my radar as a potential replacement until I actually had some time hands on with it and its keyboards

Want a decent keyboard? Buy a netbook or notebook and shove a usb 3G thing into it. Bob's your sister.

This is geeting uncomfortable now, all those years of reduction in size, now people want the impossible for least cost and the damn things are growing again. The answer is a little atom based notebook, not much bigger than a gigantic piePhone anyway.

Nobody has ever had the guts or the commitment to produce something like a Psion 5MX with phone in. Still would betoo big though. Stuff the keyboad, I want portable.

Personally I love the dual-function keyboard on the Sony Ericsson M600i and P1i - when you're used to it you can get a great typing speed up, and punctuation is easy to access, with the most common characters available without function buttons. The vertical form-factor keeps the phone small (though better than QVGA resolution would be nice) and allows for single-handed typing.

I hope SE produce more phones using this innovative keyboard - it provides an excellent balance between size and functionality.

I have an E90, but find even that too slow at times. So I have a bluetooth keyboard too.

Steve, how about adding the Nokia bluetooth keyboard to the table? ...or (shock) the Apple one (like I use).

I also have an E71, but really don't care for the keyboard and found myself back on the E90 after a month or two of the E71.

Calculations aside the E71 is much easier to use -- more on that here.

E90 - still ok, hurts you hand to type quick due to the short travel.
I will be getting a spare one soon before they stop making them.
E75 - slighter better keys than then E90 but layout not as good. Needs an upgrade with higher screen resolution and the same battery as the E90/E71.
E71 - it looks good, hopeless for typing. Perfect for occasional use,.
N97 - silly layout but the right screen resolution, very PDA like?

Old models:
9500 - good layout, better than the E90
9300 - like the 9300 but keys too close (looked great)
9210 - spacing too much, kept pressing the "help" by accident.
9110 - handled only 3-4 characters per second and then might reboot or battery fall off.

I've used an E90 for close to 2 years now after having used an E61 for over a year and quite frankly, I haven't found the E90 keyboard much better that the E61 one. In fact, in some way, I've found it slightly worst.

Number-wise, the E90 keyboard is definitely much larger than the E61's. But the keys are still far too small and far to hard to press to enable any sort of touch-typing. So you end up thumb-typing just as on a blackberry-style device. Except that since the keyboard is so much wider than on a typically blackberry-style device, thumb-typing is actually quite awkward as your thumbs (which aren't very mobile devices to start with) have to travel a much greater distance after each letter to reach the next key.

As mozam mentioned, the fact that you have to open the phone and wait for the screen to redraw (which is reasonably fast but not instant by any means) to get to the keyboard also somewhat defeats the point of a full-qwerty keyboard when it comes to typing quick replies or notes.

I still prefer the E90 over the E61 for its keyboard though but purely because of the extra row of number-keys at the top, which make entering numbers a breeze. On the E61, you had to fiddle with the microscopic blue key to get to the numbers - an endless source of frustration.

Everyone of these keyboards have one roll of keys directly on top of the other.

Why not show a keyboard like the Touch Pro2 which isn't like that.

"And if, as many people had suggested, the d-pad had been placed next to the screen (or simply missed out - does anyone need a d-pad on a full-face touch-screen phone?), the keyboard would have been larger and with more keys...."

Steve, what you don't understand is that the N97 was made for gamers in mind. Placing the d-pad next to the screen would be stupid beyond belief, and leaving it out would exclude it as a gaming phone (and N-gage in the process). I'm surprised you didn't get that. It's the only reason they included it after all.

Sorry - WHY would putting the d-pad next to the screen be stupid? What am I missing here? Can't be a left hand/right hand thing, since you could just invert the N97 and have the d-pad on the 'other' side if needed.....

Without doubt the best kboard ive used is the E61.

I liked the E90 but carrying around a folded out phone became a pain. When the E71 came out, i thought i found the perfect device but Nokia ruined it by using microscopic keys (why!).

With the E61, i used to write articles on my travels and could punch out words accurately at a pace. Since i got the E71, that all stopped within a week.

I would go back but need to have all the bits that go with a modern phone like hsdpa and headphone jack.

The E72 looks nice but im looking forward to this new internet tablet.

Looks like i'm in the minority (again). Very happy with my E90. Keyboard works just fine for me (as you can see). Tried the other physical QWERTY phones (E71, N97, etc), and they just don't match up. I-phone and 5800 virtual QWERTY keyboard get the job done, but i just like a real keyboard. If nothing else you don't lose any screen estate while typing. I liked the E75 keyboard best, but not with 1/2 the screen missing.

I've had an N97 for a week now and very happy with its keyboard...for gaming! real gaming that is, not only is the D-pad in the perfect place (to the far left, under the screen e..g game boy/ advance / SP ,DS/lite/i, ) you can map any of the qwerty keys in emulators, i prefer the ones far to the right e.g. backspace + enter. and what makes the Cherrie on the top is you can even map the volume up and camera shutter keys as L + R buttons =) so I�m very happy, perfect old school emulation phone for me.

Have to agree with dansus in that the E61 had the best keyboard. I also have been through the mill with E-series phones and haven't come close to the E61 for pure typing comfort/speed. Alas, eventually the joystick (loved that too. What happened to joysticks?)gave up the ghost and I got rid of the phone and moved on. Miss it still.

slitchfield wrote:Sorry - WHY would putting the d-pad next to the screen be stupid? What am I missing here? Can't be a left hand/right hand thing, since you could just invert the N97 and have the d-pad on the 'other' side if needed.....

- A d-pad for gaming in mind would only make sense on the side it is currently on, but because of the earpiece it wont fit unless they made the device much taller and that would IMO not be a good idea.
- If the d-pad was on the other side however, all games would have to support flipping for it to be an enjoyable gaming experience. I cant think of many games with this feature.
- If the d-pad was on the upper part it would also need dedicated gaming buttons on the other side and many games and emulators need a lot of keys (sometimes 6 or more). The qwerty is perfect for this. I don't know about you but cramming a whole bunch of gaming keys on the front face is not something I'd want.

And that's why, in my opinion, the d-pad is MUCH better off at the bottom-part of the device.

My best choices:

- 6800 rocks... followed close second by E70
- 6820 was also good.

I just got an N97, and I'm not sure that I dislike it as much as everyone. The space bar is actually in the right spot... Your right thumb fits it perfectly.

P

Just for fun I calculated the score for the 5800 XM. Since it doesn't have physical keys, I assumed a travel of 0.1mm as being the amount your finger-tip depresses when you push on the screen. With that, the score is:
63.5 * 0.1 * 31 / 109 = 1.8

Some might argue that the haptic feedback creates the sensation of a larger keypress, but I'd find it hard to quantify that. Even generously assuming that haptic feedback is the same as a 0.5mm keypress only brings the score up to 9.0.

actually, I like the D-Pad. I would rather dismiss the touch screen than the d-pad. Often website have very small navigation elements, menus, what so ever - and they are far easier to hit with a cursor thru the d-pad than with a finger.

I think that E61/E61i which I both used in 2008, have a perfect form factor, but those spongy keys were not very good. After I bought E71, I was really surprised with its keyboard usability - I always wished to have that nice "clicky" keyboard, which gives you great tactical feedback so you can switch your keyborad sound off. Now I have an E90, which has a nice, spacey kayboard but with very little tactical feedback and I can avoid mistakes only when Im using keyboard sounds.
I wonder how good the E75 keyboard is, have not tried it yet, only dummy one, and it seemed like improved E90 style keyborad - should offer good, clicky feedback.
Looking forward to E72 and, new communicator, which, I hope, will be introduced by them(Nokia) after E72 launch.

phazlehurst wrote:
I just got an N97, and I'm not sure that I dislike it as much as everyone. The space bar is actually in the right spot... Your right thumb fits it perfectly.

P

What an excellent piece of objective common sense. Some have condemned the keypad because the space bar isn't where it is expected on an aincient keyboard layout (qwerty/azerty) but any intelligent human is highly adaptable and moving the space bar slightly would take all of 10 seconds of adaptation before it becomes second nature.

Some will find any excuse to criticise. Makes life slightly more difficult for innovators.