Think of it this way - buttons or softkeyboards or touchscreens are just another input method - which we already have a choice of and methods to change so the only real impact on the coders should be the expansion of options.
The real concern is cost - things like a treo keyboard are not cheap Having used a treo for the last 3 years, the freerunner is the first complex touchscreen phone I have used and its basicly a failure in relative terms compared to input on a smartphone. While some things like the terminal keyboard (and how I wish I could permanently disable that @##$$% dictionary rubbish) could be fixed in software, its the softkey approach thats flawed. BillK On Sun, 2008-10-26 at 11:15 +0100, David Pottage wrote: > On Saturday 25 October 2008 17:39:18 JW wrote: > > vote and tell OM what you want for the next phone > > > > 1) touchscreen (no qwerty buttons) - freerunner, HTC Orbit, iphone > > 2) qwerty keyboard and tracker ball - blackberry curve > > 3) combination touchscreen plus qwerty - G1 > > As others have said, lets not complicate the situation for software authors > by > radically changing the input methods. For this reason, I think the touch > screen has to stay. Having said that I think input would be a lot easier if > we had a few extra hardware buttons. > > In order of preference > > Option 1: Touchscreen. > It would be nice though if we had a few extra buttons though. I suggest a > joystick or mini trackball below the screen and a couple of soft keys on > either side. > > Option 3: Touchscreen + Mini qwerty. > The problem with this idea is that a small query is very hard to type on, and > a big one will take a lot of screen real estate. The way I see it the only > way a query keyboard can be incorporated into a future Openmoko device > without compromising the screen is to make it slide out from the back like > the Nokia N810. The problem with that is it will increase the bulk and cost > by to much. Perhaps a better solution would be to have a small numeric keypad > that won't take much room. > > Option 2: Mini Qwerty, no Touchscreen > I HATE this idea, because it will make all existing Openmoko software > incompatible. Please don't take this route. > -- William Kenworthy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Home in Perth! _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
