Short usability commentary
It makes ZERO sense to have a QWERTY keyboard on something that has a totally different typing methodology. Teeny full keyboards should not be QWERTY. They should be alphabetical, as pretty much everyone can find things that way. Holding on to a keyboard layout only makes sense because it benefits touch-typists, and even quasi-touchers. The QWERTY keyboard was designed specifically to put commonly paired letters far away from each other. However, no one can touch-type on a phone, so we should use something that maximizes the experience for people who are looking at the keyboard.
URGH. I hate dogged adherence to standards without evaluation of what purpose those standards are serving.
I imagine I am more sensitive to this problem than most, because most of the people I know look at their keyboard at least a little, and most of them use QWERTY, so they have a sense of where the keys are. But even though the problem is more obvious than me to someone else, it does not mean that the problem does not exist.
On the other hand, I totally applaud the way the designers of this phone have folded in typographical symbols without compromising the ability to use capitals. There are essentially two shift keys, one that gives you caps and the other that gives you punctuation. SMRT.
URGH. I hate dogged adherence to standards without evaluation of what purpose those standards are serving.
I imagine I am more sensitive to this problem than most, because most of the people I know look at their keyboard at least a little, and most of them use QWERTY, so they have a sense of where the keys are. But even though the problem is more obvious than me to someone else, it does not mean that the problem does not exist.
On the other hand, I totally applaud the way the designers of this phone have folded in typographical symbols without compromising the ability to use capitals. There are essentially two shift keys, one that gives you caps and the other that gives you punctuation. SMRT.