Giving up the keyboard?

[evwhore]

I've had some version of Treo for quite some time, going from the 300 to the 650p and now the 700p. In recent months I had pretty much settled on getting an HTC EVO (I live in Sprint 4G territory), the only real question being when I'd get around to it but now they've gone and released a new version with a physical hardware keyboard (it's smaller

Comments

[schmengie]

by no keyboard I am assuming you mean the virtual keyboard like the iPhone. I went from Treo to iPhone and initially hated the virtual keyboard. Over time I have gotten used to it and can type pretty much as fast. I hate the shift to get to numbers though

[evwhore]

by no keyboard I am assuming you mean the virtual keyboard like the iPhone

Yep, edited to clarify. Thanks for weighing in. (Speaking of which, how fares the battle of the bulge?)

[schmengie]

still bulging :-). The good news is basically I have been stable. Bad news is I have made no progress. But stable is a positive step for me. My plan is to kick it into gear after I get back from Super Bowl but I will post when I do. The public postings helped me stay straight

[dmorr]

I am a pretty fast typist (~90 wpm), and I have an iphone.

And I hate the virtual keyboard.

However, my previous phone was a treo, and the iphone was such a huge upgrade in every other way that the much worse keyboard didn't really detract from my enjoyment.

I haven't tried a modern smartphone with a real keyboard, but I imagine it would be an upgrade.

I, too

[freelikebeer]

Hate my virtual keyboard. I'm upgrade eligible in February, and I'm eyeing a hard keyboard. It is still central to what I use the phone for other than calling.

[ext_1460]

I'm a fast regular typist, but never learned thumb-typing at high-speed (my previous phone was a samsung blackjack 2 with a good keyboard, but I still never got terribly fast at it).

I got the Evo in May, and have no regrets. Swype is a very good soft keyboard, and for short messages, is faster (for me) than a tiny physical keyboard. For ssh usage, it's a pain to switch to a weaker keyboard app that does control and special keys well, but that's well into special-purpose territory.

[evwhore]

Mmm... I love that giant screen too. It sounds like 4.3" vs. 3.6" makes up for the lack of a real keyboard.

[gunga_galunga]

You will love Swype typing. Way faster than the virtual keyboard on the iphone. I had an early treo with a keypad, the first gen iphone, and now the droid x and i'm faster by far on the droid.

[ejwu]

I have gotten two keyboardless phones for free in the past 13 months (Nexus 1 and Nexus S). I have also spent ~$500 of my own money to buy a G2, and will mostly likely go back to using it once I'm done fiddling with the NS. So for me at least, the keyboard is a pretty big deal.

I have used Swype/Shapewriter, and while it's generally an improvement over the stock virtual keyboard, it still sucks a lot compared to a physical keyboard, especially for numbers and symbols.

One note about the Epic - that 5th row of numbers is actually pretty nice (based on my usage of the G1, which also had 5 rows). But I also used the G1 a lot for recording poker results. It's mildly helpful for things like passwords and the like as well. My internal monologue rails against the lack of the 5th row on the G2 pretty often, but that's probably just because I used the G1 before.

I think my typing speed on a regular keyboard hovers around 90-100 WPM, but I haven't measured recently.