Late lament on the death of slide-out keyboards
Isn't it strange how all the high-end smartphones with keyboards have up and disappeared? There isn't a single desirable smartphone with a physical QWERTY keyboard on the horizon. The original Motorola Droid was the phone that started the Android phenomenon, and its offspring sold well, but the Droid 5 never materialized.
For the past several years, buying a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard has meant settling for less than the latest and greatest technology on the market. When the Droid 4 launched in February 2012, it had already been completely outspecced and outclassed by devices with better screens. Arguably, there hasn't been a top-tier smartphone with a physical keyboard since the Samsung Epic 4G set a new high bar for Android devices in August, 2010. The carriers had decided to treat QWERTY sliders as messaging phones for teens rather than tools of the elite, and adjusted their asks and advertising respectively. There’s also the idea that there’s an Android phone out there for everyone. The differences in Android phones were huge. Slide-out keyboard, small screen, large screen, slim or bulky. Now a days it seems like Android phones are all merging into the same basic design principle; slim with a huge screen. Leaving a market gap that any competitor could jump onto, much the way Android did when the one-size-fits-all iPhone dominated.
When Android came along and smartphones truly began to take off, handsets with QWERTY keyboards did very well for Sprint. The Samsung Moment, the EVO Shift, the Epic 4G: "We sold multimillions of those," said Kaufman. When Sprint asked customers whether they'd buy a physical keyboard the next time around — not so long ago — 75 percent of existing QWERTY users said they would. "We went out and built the LG Mach and the Photon Q. It was a big party and nobody came." So much for surveys. "Half of your customers buy the iPhone. All those people who said, 'Oh, I'm going to buy QWERTY,' boom, take them out of the equation." In addition, "the market has moved to everyone buying iconic phones... people see the advertising, they walk in, they want to buy a Galaxy S III."
Some of you might be thinking a slide-out keyboard is old technology, but there are advantages. People can type much faster and error-free on hardware keyboards. Being able to see everything on screen is a huge plus, and playing games is infinitely more enjoyable with mechanical buttons.
As a devout user of physical QWERTY keyboards, I'm pretty sure I'm screwed.
[Ev: Still need to trim this down]
For the past several years, buying a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard has meant settling for less than the latest and greatest technology on the market. When the Droid 4 launched in February 2012, it had already been completely outspecced and outclassed by devices with better screens. Arguably, there hasn't been a top-tier smartphone with a physical keyboard since the Samsung Epic 4G set a new high bar for Android devices in August, 2010. The carriers had decided to treat QWERTY sliders as messaging phones for teens rather than tools of the elite, and adjusted their asks and advertising respectively. There’s also the idea that there’s an Android phone out there for everyone. The differences in Android phones were huge. Slide-out keyboard, small screen, large screen, slim or bulky. Now a days it seems like Android phones are all merging into the same basic design principle; slim with a huge screen. Leaving a market gap that any competitor could jump onto, much the way Android did when the one-size-fits-all iPhone dominated.
When Android came along and smartphones truly began to take off, handsets with QWERTY keyboards did very well for Sprint. The Samsung Moment, the EVO Shift, the Epic 4G: "We sold multimillions of those," said Kaufman. When Sprint asked customers whether they'd buy a physical keyboard the next time around — not so long ago — 75 percent of existing QWERTY users said they would. "We went out and built the LG Mach and the Photon Q. It was a big party and nobody came." So much for surveys. "Half of your customers buy the iPhone. All those people who said, 'Oh, I'm going to buy QWERTY,' boom, take them out of the equation." In addition, "the market has moved to everyone buying iconic phones... people see the advertising, they walk in, they want to buy a Galaxy S III."
Some of you might be thinking a slide-out keyboard is old technology, but there are advantages. People can type much faster and error-free on hardware keyboards. Being able to see everything on screen is a huge plus, and playing games is infinitely more enjoyable with mechanical buttons.
As a devout user of physical QWERTY keyboards, I'm pretty sure I'm screwed.
[Ev: Still need to trim this down]
