Full FeedThe keyboard was supposed to save the Palm Pre, not doom it
Back in January, the Palm Pre was seen as the bee’s knees for a couple of main reasons. Among them was a kickin’ OS and the other was a slide out keyboard. The iPhone and many touch screen only phones lack a physical keyboard and many were passionate about having one. So Palm played the safe bet, right?
Well…not so fast. The Blackberry Storm despite its quirky tap touchscreen keyboard sold pretty well in the end and the second coming is sure to rock the same style entry method that allows the entire screen to tap downward (an odd sensation at first). Many of us figured hard-core BlackBerry fans wouldn’t go near the Storm with a ten foot pole and we were wrong. The passionate fight over a soft keyboard vs. a physical seems to be turning.
Witness the latest Android update, a.k.a. “Cupcake,” bringing some soft keyboard goodness to soon-to-be-launched phones like the HTC Ion. The Ion is the follow up to the HTC G1, the world’s first Android phone. MG Siegler had this to say about freeing the phone from a space-wasting physical keyboard: “See how easy that was HTC? All you had to do was kill that awful physical keyboard. Nice work.”
We are seeing more and more phones skip the sometimes awkward, cumbersome and clumsy keyboards for bigger screen real estate. Bigger screens are turning phones into better venues for watching TV or movies, for a more immersive gaming experience and of course the coveted mobile internet. Removing the space a keyboard takes up makes phones more engaging, more approachable, more sexy.
So back to the Palm Pre. Has the keyboard become a liability if the tide is turning? Perhaps. Based on a quick review from Boy Genius, “It’s really not good. My hands aren’t that big (I can type faster than you could ever dream on a BlackBerry, iPhone or E71) and my thumb literally takes up 3 or 4 keys on the keyboard.” This kind of not hitting the mark quite right is going to hurt sales, even from those that are drawn to the concept but believe they need a good physical keyboard.
Palm has repeatedly said the Pre is just the first of the webOS family of devices. I suspect we’ll see a “cousin” of the Pre on Verizon and it will not feature a physical keyboard. If the Pre doesn’t garner the sales Palm desperately seeks, I am sure there is a touch-only version (which I named the Ante last week) ready to come out blazing. Well, mostly sure I guess.
What do you think? Is the Palm Pre keyboard now a boat-anchor of liability or will its presence insure solid sales?
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So you take one review that wasn’t a real review from a biased site based on a pre production product and you run with it? Nice try. Thanks for the laughs.
on June 1, 2009 at 09:48 AM - LINKSpoon, thanks for your giggles as well. “Run with it”? Yep, I was so bold as to end the post with a question mark.
on June 1, 2009 at 10:53 AM - LINK@spoon
“So you take one review that wasn’t a real review..”
Sorry, was that review done in an alternate universe? What do you mean by not real?
“from a biased site..”
yeah, you Pre fanvaporwareboys just hate anyone dumping on the Pre - it’s all a conspiracy! Apple is the Borg! Run for your lives!
“based on a pre production product”
So what you’re saying is, so close to the release date this is a pre-production Pre (is that what “Pre” stands for?) and the keyboard which is a physical component will somehow magically manifest into a much larger component with large keys, spaced well apart?
You know “Spoon” you should take some advice from your own name and eat “Spoon”.
on June 1, 2009 at 09:57 PM - LINK