Cell phones with full QWERTY keyboards are giving plain old handsets a run for money. The current craze started with PalmOne’s Treo 600, currently twelfth on the list of best-selling phones at Amazon.com. Nipping at the Treo’s heels are new phones from Danger, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nokia, Sierra Wireless, Sony, and others. Why the move toward QWERTY keyboards? Mobile users say they’re frustrated by responding to text messages via a numeric keypad. The QWERTY keyboard changes that.
Opportunity Taps. Sensing opportunity, competitors are serving up alternatives to the Treo. Sierra Wireless’s Voq features a 12-key dial pad that pivots out to form half of a QWERTY keyboard and exposes the other half underneath. The Voq allows users to type and save notes on the QWERTY keyboard during a phone call, a feature unique to the Microsoft Windows Smartphone platform. Another Voq feature predictively completes QWERTY input, suggesting names in the phone’s contact book, for instance. Creativity is rampant in QWERTY-enabled phones. The new HP IPaq 6315 is the only Windows Smartphone so far to ship with a removable keypad that clips onto the bottom of the unit (making it slightly thicker in the process). Danger’s new Sidekick II from T-Mobile is debuting pending certification to run hundreds of Java applications. The device sports added and rearranged buttons to simplify tasks from picture taking to gaming.None of these keyboards will ever be sufficient for touch-typing, but customers will likely be content to tap on them anyway.The more intensive the data use, the more a keyboard as a data-entry device is required.
Converged devices may conjure up false alarms of past years, when all gadgets were supposedly boiling down into one uber-device, but the lowly QWERTY keyboard is indeed compelling some handheld users to set aside their older PDAs for good. Many models of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, an early full-QWERTY PDA, are also now mobile phones. The BlackBerry 7230 is currently fourteenth among Amazon.com’s best-selling phones.QWERTY-enabled smart phones typically fall in the $200 to $400 range, though almost all such phones also require a lengthy initial service contract with a carrier. Smart phones without full QWERTY keyboards vary in price, but many are available for less than that amount.The newest QWERTY phones are commonly found only at one carrier. The Voq, for instance, is available in the Netherlands; in the United States it’s certified for AT&T Wireless’s network, but that provider isn’t yet offering it.
Moving Beyond QWERTY .Phone makers are also toying with designs bearing fewer keys than a QWERTY keyboard, but more than the 12 keys of a regular keypad. RIM is planning a slimmer, more cell phone-like version of the BlackBerry code-named Charm, reports Web magazine Engadget. Each key might represent one of two possible letters of the alphabet, with the phone guessing which one as the user types. The new phones also pose some new social-behavior challenges. Users of the cellular radios in such phones will have to get in the habit of turning them off to conserve power, or to respect bans on cell phone use in particular areas. Taking such action on a Windows Smartphone is known as putting it in “flight mode.”
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