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.