I hate touch screen keyboards. The author owned an iPhone then an android phone. If you've never coded on a Nokia e63 keyboard using vim over s2putty you've never lived.
I recently gave into the powers that be and got a new phone with a touch screen keyboard (a galaxy s2).
There are heaps of benefits to this phone over my e72 (although I my last true love was the e63) - not least of which is a vastly superior web browsing and email experience but gosh the keyboard is a frustrating piece of shit.
I would gladly trade the bottom 2 inches of my screen for a permanent hardware keyboard and no screen rotation.
Am I doomed to languish at 10wpm for the rest of my days?!
I'm so pissed off with Nokia for ditching Symbian. They were so close to being good for so many years, then they ditched it because they wanted to be like the iPhone.
Don't they realise that I actively chose NOT to purchase an iPhone? The point of difference is that they're not the same as the iPhone, a single minded unproductive useless piece of eye candy.
Even the multi-tasking on Android doesn't hold a candle to Symbian (for example I can't switch to my SSH client whilst a web page loads in the background).
Nokia, I will hate you for ever. But not as much as I hate this piece of shit touch screen you've relegated me to.
Yeah a slider is the next best thing - but the form factor of the Nokia E series was just perfect. I've tried quite a few "wide slider" keyboards and the amount of thumb movement required is really quite large compared with the slimmer E series qwerties so I could never really feel as comfortable (although I suppose I'd build up accuracy far quicker on that than the touch screen).
Things like blackberry's bold with the hybrid touch/qwerty setup look pretty good, but Nokia E series has a control key :) Really it was the perfect geeks phone, Nokia just didn't want to be for geeks any more I guess.
> but the form factor of the Nokia E series was just perfect.
Eseries is not a single form factor. Eseries phones exist in pretty much all possible form factor: candybar, bar, candybar/fold, slider and fold. At the very least.
I've had two Android phones with great keyboards: the HTC G1 and the Samsung Sidekick 4G. In fact I'm typing this comment on the SK4G while lying in bed.
What makes both keyboards great is the spacing around each key. Other phones like the original Motorola Droid crammed the keyboard into the smallest space possible, and there was no space between the keys.
With these two keyboards, I can hit about 30wpm without the use of any accelerators. I typed in each character of this comment.
Unfortunately with the SK4G, it does not include the tilde and backtick with the stock keymap, but that is fixed relatively easily thanks to folks on xda-developers.com.
> What makes both keyboards great is the spacing around each key. Other phones like the original Motorola Droid crammed the keyboard into the smallest space possible, and there was no space between the keys.
Hm, in my experience it's just the overall size of the keyboard or perhaps size of the keys including any spacing. My previous phone was a Blackberry Pearl 8100, which had a half-QWERTY keyboard with keys large even by Blackberry standards (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Obn3GQp-L._AA280_.jp..., phone width is 50 mm / 2 in). The keys have no spacing between them other than the ridges formed by separate buttons, but were pretty easy to feel out under my thumbs due to their shape and size. I rarely missed a key.
The N950 would suit you I suspect, but that is a very limited release for devs only (I presume there will be a WP7 version which might work). I rather liked the N900 I have (keyboard was a little weak though) but what I really miss is the Nokia 9500, when I took it to the US a few years back (as it was the "best" SIM unlocked phone I had) I found myself rather enjoying it and it's keyboard has a proper number row.
> Even the multi-tasking on Android doesn't hold a candle to Symbian (for example I can't switch to my SSH client whilst a web page loads in the background).
That depends on the browser you're using. Can't speak for all of them, but this works exactly as expected on both Opera Mini and Mobile.
This is exactly why I switched to a BlackBerry after using both an iPhone and a couple of Android phones. Most of what I want to deal with is text, and the BlackBerry handles text better than any of the other smart phones I've tried.
The Droid I was arguably better for dealing with coding over SSH, however BBSSH is sufficient on the BlackBerry to actually code on a remote server. And, I enjoy having non-gmail email accounts that actually work well on my phone.
I recently gave into the powers that be and got a new phone with a touch screen keyboard (a galaxy s2).
There are heaps of benefits to this phone over my e72 (although I my last true love was the e63) - not least of which is a vastly superior web browsing and email experience but gosh the keyboard is a frustrating piece of shit.
I would gladly trade the bottom 2 inches of my screen for a permanent hardware keyboard and no screen rotation.
Am I doomed to languish at 10wpm for the rest of my days?!
I'm so pissed off with Nokia for ditching Symbian. They were so close to being good for so many years, then they ditched it because they wanted to be like the iPhone.
Don't they realise that I actively chose NOT to purchase an iPhone? The point of difference is that they're not the same as the iPhone, a single minded unproductive useless piece of eye candy.
Even the multi-tasking on Android doesn't hold a candle to Symbian (for example I can't switch to my SSH client whilst a web page loads in the background).
Nokia, I will hate you for ever. But not as much as I hate this piece of shit touch screen you've relegated me to.