In a common sense world, the next iPhone should be a QWERTY Smartphone

Common sense dictates that the upcoming iPhone should be a QWERTY Smartphone with an actual physical keyboard. In my opinion, the current iPhone virtual keyboard borders between a complete bust to manageable, depending on how much time you are willing to give to adjust to it. As a Treo user, even though I have adjusted quite well to the virtual keyboard, by and large it still is a pain and I don’t think current enterprise smartphone users will have the time and patience to get used to Apple’s virtual keyboard.
After all, there is a reason they call them “Crack”Berry. Have you ever seen a BlackBerry user typing rapidly to respond to an email just before a plane takes off? Try that as a relatively new iPhone user and you end flinging the damn iPhone in frustration. Enterprise users don’t care about the razzle dazzle interfaces of the iPhone. They need to get their work done fast and the iPhone virtual keyboard is just a huge hindrance. The auto completion feature that is supposed to make up for the typing inaccuracy sucks half the time.  In fact, the main reason I still keep my Treo apart from key 3rd party apps is because of the physical keyboard.
I find it hilarious how Apple executive Phil Schiller threw in his enterprise presentation
“for those of you that don’t know, typing on the iPhone is awwwwwesome”  When in reality, half the time, typing on this thing stinks( my opinion )

While Apple’s new enterprise features look impressive, they run a high risk of totally flopping because of the lack of a physical keyboard. Plus, with all the recent defections of a few former Apple executives and employees to Palm, you would think Apple has blood in their eyes and are just chomping at the bits to bury Palm for ever( If I were Ed Colligan, I’d be scared to death at this prospect). All these lead to a super thin Apple signature designed qwerty smartphone.
Now of course, we are dealing with hard headed Apple here with more than enough arrogance to think they can shove a virtual keyboard down the throats of enterprise users.

Comments

[Chad Garrett]

I have used the iPhone since it came out. I agree, at first I thought the iPhone would not even be successful because of the virtual keyboard. It took time with it, but I can really use the iPhone keyboard fast and efficiently with two thumbs.

Users still need to acclimate themselves with a thumb board, I remember the first time I used the Tungsten C, it was really awkward. Now, it seems silly we even used devices without keyboards.

I think it would be nice to see two versions, this way people have a choice, but it won't happen. I think the biggest obstacle is figuring out how to use the keyboard with a "real" application, like a word processor. I have no problems working on a 320x320 Palm device with Documents to go, but the information is small on the screen and the stylus is very helpful for this. We shall see what is to come.