201–210 of 565 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I could easily type blindly on those, the Nokia days
If the claim is > I've never been faster and more accurate at typing on my phone than when these were a thing. It's easy to believe the accuracy claim (after all, you can feel the keys and there's fewer of them) while doubting the speed claim (since you have to perform 1-3x the number of keypresses to get the same result).
Blackberry 8700 is the gold standard for a phone with a keyboard. It is the most productive cellphone I have ever owned. Phone calls, text message and email is what it did well. And it did exceedingly well. The thumbwheel was just the right spot to quickly scan an email. The keyboard is as good as they get. The operating system was built to do exactly this and not that much more. It is really hard to convey how great…
It was really the rise of BYOD policies that killed blackberry I think— they had enthusiastic fans but it was a pretty small group relative to those who would pick the iPhone given a choice.
But I do feel that it might just be a niche.
Since I think most people have already gotten used to all display phones, there were even some phones in the past that tries removing the volume buttons and such.
My guess is you have to grip a bit harder than you normally would to keep it stable, and this may impact the typing speed (vis-a-vis old school BB). Cameras make iPhones pretty top-heavy.
I don't see the weight of this Clicks case, I'd guess it's at least the same density as the iPhone (~32g/in height) so minimum of +70g, and possibly more like +100-120g.
Nevertheless I love the chutzpah of this device.
The proportions compared to a classic blackberry seem terrible for typing ergonomics. With a Blackberry, the overall device is closer to a square and the keyboard is basically the bottom half of the device. With the case, the keyboard is like the bottom 20% and it seems like the weight of the rest of the phone would be constantly trying to leverage it out of your grasp, especially since blackberries were like half as…
They did add a weight behind the keyboard so that it wouldn't feel too top-heavy.
That being said, this product doesn't look good - it seems uncomfortable to hold. The keys are low, the device gets comically tall and I suppose significantly unbalanced or top heavy.
Related to that, I'm missing a video showing a longer typing session, or an unaffiliated review.
This made me realise how much I'd love a physical keyboard on my phone. But not like this, this is too long and I don't think one will have a pleasant typing experience with this. I thought about this one for a few minutes, but I can't think of a good way to integrate a keyboard in a smartphone case, that will give you the experience of a blackberry or similar. The slide-out ones that you could use in horizontal orie…
I had an android phone with a physical keyboard. It was terrible. To avoid bloating the thing to a full on tablet the keys are so small it's practically impossible to not hit a whole cluster of keys, at least with my large-but-not-freakishly so hands. (e.g. average for a 6'ish adult male). To top it off the feel was horribly as the keys have about 0.1mm of travel.
Blackberry 8700 is the gold standard for a phone with a keyboard. It is the most productive cellphone I have ever owned. Phone calls, text message and email is what it did well. And it did exceedingly well. The thumbwheel was just the right spot to quickly scan an email. The keyboard is as good as they get. The operating system was built to do exactly this and not that much more. It is really hard to convey how great…
The problem is that iPhone and Android were stealing users from that pool. Lots of BB users loved the physical keyboard, but I feel many of them were fairly easily lured away by the greater functionality offered by touchscreens. BB actually tried to hold on to this niche for quite a while, they didn't launch their touchscreen-centric BlackBerry 10 line until 2013.
I regularly miss having a physical keyboard on my phone, but I'm not sure I would give up things like good web browsing, watching videos, or rich maps to make it happen. People are ultimately willing to downgrade their experience in a few activities like messaging in order to make other activities like web browsing actually viable.