Getting Sideways - Landscape, Slide-Out Physical Keyboard on the Samsung SGH-T699

Samsung's next offering has been the subject of a huge tract of speculation and guesswork over the past few months. Many have been expecting a physical keyboard behemoth, powered with a monstrous processor and having the technical capability to compete in the Blackberry-dominated QWERTY smartphone market. These people may be somewhat underwhelmed by the Samsung SGH-T699, but it looks like a decent little handset anyway.

Offering a 5mp camera, a Snapdragon processor, a 720 x1280 display, the Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and of course a landscape-orientated, slide out physical keyboard, the SGH-T699 is not exactly a heavyweight. However it will appeal to business users who want a nippy little machine with a full five-row QWERTY attached. The keyboard looks decent enough, but Samsung know that they need to live up to Blackberry's supreme front-facing ergonomics and the landscape based Nokias which once ruled the market.

Some of the greatest QWERTY phones have boasted the same form - a full physical keyboard slides out from beneath the screen unit, resulting in an easily accessible array of keys with enough space between them for even the clumsiest thumbs. Samsung's own smartphones have followed this format - the Captivate Glide has a preposterous name but has been well received, the Epic 4G is a bit of a toy but still has a physical keyboard, while the Stratosphere was the only real physical keyboard offering for Verizon customers in the USA.

Trying to shoehorn a physical keyboard onto a small chassis doesn't work, so Samsung's offering is likely to be chunkier than its touchscreen or front-facing keyboard counterparts. The amount of speculation and conversation that this leak has caused is a good indication of how badly the market wants a physical keyboard on upcoming smartphones. The Samsung SGH-T699 might not have answered all our problems, but it's getting there.

Related: The Huawei M660 is another low-budget physical keyboard smartphone, this time with a front-facing QWERTY layout. But why are manufacturers concentrating on the featherweight end of the market? US and European consumers are desperate for a powerful contender.

Tactus Physical Keyboard - We Have The Technology

A touchscreen which transforms into a physical keyboard has been announced by Tactus Technology to much excitement from critics and the public. Physical Keyboard Phones is excited about this for three reasons.

Firstly, it demonstrates that people are seeing the flaws inherent in touch screen technology. Rather than pretending that touchscreens are effective as word processing tools, or simply ignoring the business users who require keyboards altogether, the industry (at least, parts of it) is starting to respond to the consumer demand. What's also interesting is that the tech scene and mainstream media are getting excited about it both in terms of gadgetry awesomeness and genuine practical value.

Secondly, it's refreshing to see that effort is being spent on innovation rather than half-baked software workarounds. The supposed solution to the accuracy problem encountered by touchscreen users was originally an autocorrect feature, and everybody knows how that turned out. Now, money is being spent trying to bridge the gap between the touchscreen's sexiness and the keyboard's practicality. And we like that.

Thirdly, the unison of touchscreen and physical keyboard works both ways. It'll bring keyboards to touchscreens, yeah, but it'll also bring touchscreens to applications where keyboards have always been the norm. An ordinary cheap desktop keyboard might have greater levels of interactivity thanks to a dynamic display, or a TV remote could have a database of recorded shows for scrolling through.

Of course there will inevitably be teething problems and there's no chance the tech will be on the next generation of Blackberry handsets. For now, business users will need to buy a Blackberry or get a keyboard for their smartphone or iPhone. But this development bodes well for business users and those who require a physical keyboard on their phone.

Apple Flirted With Physical Keyboard for iPhone

Apple Flirted With Physical Keyboard For iPhone

It's difficult to imagine a pre-iPhone technological landscape. Way back in summer 2007, against a backdrop of Blackberry domination and Rihanna's Umbrella, Apple tentatively launched what would quickly become one of the greatest pieces of consumer tech and indeed one of the most iconic commercial products of all time.

We've grown very used to its sleek appearance, full-frontal touch screen and dainty dimensions. But during its development more than half a decade ago, the iPhone nearly became a very different beast.

Tony Fadell, an iPod engineer and one of the original architects of Apple's audio strategy, has made the startling revelation that one of the three iPhone concepts had a built-in physical keyboard. This would have changed everything, both from the perspective of PKP and in terms of the wider world. As I'm about to demonstrate.

• An iPhone without a touchscreen would have completely changed the way mobile phones developed from the year 2007 onwards. Without the explosive popularity of the iPhone, fewer non-Apple products would have embraced the touchscreen technology and mobile phones would have continued on their downward spiral towards excessive miniaturization.
• Even if the iPhone had a touch screen as well as a physical keyboard (like the newer Blackberry Bold models) the emphasis would never have been placed on touch screens like it is now. Phones like the Blackberry, the Nokia E7 and the later HTCs would have become the norm, both for business and consumer markets.
• Explorations into the touchscreen-only market would have been made by the first manufacturers to embrace the tech - HP, Nokia and maybe (don't email me about the IBM Simon)
• Angry Birds would never have been possible.

Phones at the time of the iPhone's release were drifting towards the front-facing or slide-out keyboards. The emphasis was placed on speedy messaging - something which seems to have fallen by the wayside in the touchscreen era. Nokia and Blackberry had different approaches to keypads (landscape slide-out and front-facing respectively) but both offered much greater messaging than any touchscreen, especially the primitive resistive touchscreens of yesteryear.

Had it not been for HTC's introduction of Android phones with physical keyboards (which Steve Jobs believed were in violation of Apple's intellectual property) and later Motorola's Droid, the iPhone might have permanently destroyed the physical keyboard's presence in the consumer arena. As it stands, users are more keen on the sleeker, error-prone smartphones than they are on chunky, efficient keyboards - with HTC focussing on touchscreens, users are left with a choice between Blackberry or the dark side.