Upon the iPhone’s release, legions of Blackberry stalwarts complained bitterly about Apple’s touchscreen device, and the haptic deprivation of its onscreen keyboard. Now, two years later, Palm Pre owners are making the same complaint, but topsy turvy: they are ironically complaining that their smartphones should have onscreen keyboards in addition to the slide out QWERTY.
The results come from a study done by Strategic Analystics, which finds that — despite Palm having specifically added a QWERTY keyboard to the Pre to avoid the complaints that plagued the iPhone — users still want a software keyboard like Apple’s.
The problem is that while the QWERTY layout may be superior for mass entry of text, an onscreen keyboard can be convenient for quick note jotting, without having to go through the trouble of sliding out the Pre’s somewhat chintzy keypad.
“Although users liked having a physical QWERTY keyboard, they did not want to have to slide it out every time they wanted to type something,” says analyst Paul Brown.
The issue, of course, is simply that users want the best of both worlds when it comes to smartphone text entry… and right now, only Google’s Android phones are offering both QWERTY and onscreen keyboard. But Palm’s Pre, at least, is better positioned to hack in a virtual keyboard in a patch: iPhone users will need to continue to go touchscreen only.
Source: Geek.com
Follow us on Twitter!