unCubeme

I came across this post on Life Hacker blog. This article referenced two different bloggers, first a physical keyboard loving Android G1 user and two, a virtual keyboard loving iPhone user. Now this brought up a good question that I have been cotemplating for a long time. I have been a huge Windows Mobile fan since I have been using in back in 2001. I received an HP Jornada 520 for Christmas. I hooked this up to my cellphone at the time and was signing on to instant messager using this device. There was only one huge problem,this Pocket PC device did not have a physical keyboard built in and all it provided was the horrible keyboad built into windows mobile that is required to use the stylus to type with. This was not fun to use.

I used the Jornada for a couple of years, but in the end did not use it too much after that. I didn’t get another pda till 2005. This was my first venture into the smartphone market. I bought a Samsung i500 which is a flip Palm phone. This thing was BIG DOG of its time. This had a physical keyboard for a phone, and it had a touch writing area for character recognition but still no full physical qwerty keyboard. Since this phone was missing a few key features that most phones had at this time such as full text messaging and external caller ID as well as funning Palm OS that I was not use to. I decided to upgrade to the Samsung i600 which ran Windows Mobile 2003.

The Samsung i600 as a phone fixed a lot of things that were wrong with the i500. It had an external caller ID, it had full text messaging, and it had a SD card slot, plus it had Windows. Well once again this is a windows smartphone with a physical phone keyboard but no qwerty keyboard.

After this phone I upgraded to a Treo 700wx which ran Windows Mobile and this time had a full qwerty keyboard. I really enjoyed this phone until the microphone went out. So I had to rush and get the Motorola Q9c that I am using right now. This phone has been pretty good to me even though its not a touch screen phone like the Treo.

I have gotten pretty acustomed to having a physical qwerty keyboard. I vowed that I will never have a phone without a physical keyboard. As phones get more and more technically advanced such as all touchscreen phones, non-smartphone smartphones I may have to rethink this question. I mean the iPhone is great product and all but I refuse to buy any apple product. On the other hand as more and more companies pump out generic “iPhone killers” that just look like garbage just like the Samsung Instinct, I’m glad I don’t have a garbage phone like that.

There is one awesome thing that there is a huge benefit of having a virtual touch scree phone. The screen size is larger allowing the viewing of movies and webpages much easier. Now touch screens with slide out keyboards can do the same, but that adds a lot of bulk. So if I had a larger screen phone, I will have to suffer without a physical keyboard. Due to me being a Windows Mobile fan that means I have to wait for phones that will be released with Windows Mobile 6.5 or do I?

I was watching a video on you tube in which somebody was demonstrating feature of Windows Mobile 6.5 on a touchscreen phone and said wow that phone looks sweet, it turned out to be the HTC Touch Diamond2. I’m a little tired of my Q9c so I was looking where I can get this Diamond2 and guess what … It is not sold in America YET. I can buy an unlocked version but this will not help me out since I am on Sprint. So as of right now I’m waiting for that to be released with Sprint and lets hope it does.

So to answer that question I may prefer a physical keyboard but I am willing to try out a virtual keyboard. What do you guys think?