A Physical Keyboard? Your Insane

    This morning I woke up to find some articles posted online (here and here) more or less asking Apple to add some functionality to the iPhone. The first article was written by someone looking to ditch their Nokia N95 for the iPhone, but with the snag being that they require it has a better camera. While that is technically the only request, he went out of his way to include a mockup of the phone, which also includes 60GB of storage, a slide out keyboard, a front-facing camera for video chatting, and a camera with optical zoom. The folks over at Gizmodo took the idea and tweaked it some to end up with this.
    As I read over these things I can help but wonder, have they not completely missed the boat here? The decision by Apple to not include a physical keyboard, but only a virtual one was without a doubt a huge, nay epic, decision. While the folks over at RIM were scratching their head on how they could possibly make QWERTY keyboard keys smaller, and even resorting to putting two letters on a single key, Apple saw the issue and sidestepped it like the plague. Of course, this decision was very much a gamble, are people ready for this? Are they willing to give up a physical keyboard? The answer is yes. While I can hear the hardcore Blackberry users yelling, I believe this is a case where they need to be ignored (end users don't like to hear this, but there are occasions when its true).
    Want proof? Take a gander at the Blackberry Storm and the Android G1.
    Like the iPhone, the Storm chose to skip over the physical keyboard and in its place put a virtual one with "haptic-feedback" (the much discussed 'clicking'). I had the chance to play with a Storm briefly this past week and found it to be a nice phone, and while it did take me some time to get used to the keyboard I could see myself becoming quite good with it after a few days of use. Oddly enough, one of the common questions/complaints with the Storm is whether or not the 'click' can be turned off and the keyboard can just be used as a touchscreen (the answer is no). While were on this tour d'phone, it makes sense to discuss the     Android G1 which did choose to include a physical keyboard in its design. What feature are the Android developers feverishly working on? That's right, a virtual keyboard. While I have not heard many complaints about the G1's keyboard (granted I don't know anyone with one) people still have a desire for a virtual keyboard, and how convenient it is to be able to immediately type away without having to flip up a screen.
    The transition to a virtual keyboard can no doubt be a unpleasant one, but realistically a keyboard the size of a business card (virtual or not) is going take some getting used to. Before you start pondering how you are going to text while driving on a virtual keyboard, you wont have the problem soon, it becomes illegal in California in two days. Problem solved.
    After having used the iPhone keyboard for a while now, I can say that the only real issue with it is the lack of landscape typing in crucial applications like Mail and SMS. While I do fine with the vertical keyboard, I think the addition of sideways typing could really make it easier to type away on a long email. I am in no way the only person who feels this way, and I know Apple has received may-a-request for this.
    Getting back to the original point of the article, the decision to omit a physical keyboard was no doubt a large one, but it is not something I see being reversed. Virtual keyboards are going to continue to improve to the point that we will look back and laugh at the Blackberries with rice-grain sized keys. So those of you holding out for an iPhone with a full QWERTY, don't hold your breath, or better yet keep dreaming.

Just a few quick note on the other additional features added to the phone:
60GB of space - Sure, who doesn't want more space? That's just a matter of price, SSDs aren't getting cheaper as fast as anyone would like
Front-facing camera - Word is the G2 is going to have this, well see. The type of video you would see (and transmit) on a 3G network in real-time seems pretty awful. While there are physical limitations which constrain this, I think the network is another big consideration.
Optical-zoom camera - No doubt the iPhone camera is beyond pathetic. The lack of even primitive video capture abilities is quite perplexing considering that every cheapish cell today can do this. I think the full zoom is a bit much. Realistically I see improvements to the camera in the future, but its still going to be second-class in the camera department, as are all cellphone cameras.