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Comment by andreygrehov | Hacker News Reader

I see positive comments about the keyboard, but is it really a good UX to type on such a small keyboard? I mean, when you use your laptop, pretty much all of your fingers are involved in the process of typing, whereas if the same keyboard is part of a mobile phone, you only use your thumbs, which is the opposite of how qwerty keyboards supposed to be used. It feels like the idea of a full-blown keyboard on a mobile phone sounds cool, but when it comes to practice, must be a complete misuse of a technology. It's like if smartwatches were made with 8K display – sounds cool, but how practical it really is?

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I think the main advantage is blind typing. No amount of muscle memory can trump the tactile feedback of raised keys and home-row notches. When you're forced to rely on sight, you make more errors and are limited to using just one finger at a time (because your eyes can only focus on one spot at once).

With that being said, I can blind type on my smartphone, just not with a QWERTY IME. I instead use a 4x4 grid-layout (MessagEase [1]) that's large enough to consistently hit the correct zones without any visual feedback.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagEase

instant haptic feedback, nothing better than that

and are limited to using just one finger at a time (because your eyes can only focus on one spot at once).

That isn't entirely accurate. It's not because you focus at point x, that another finger cannot be moving at x + y cm and perform the correct action there. I never learned to type blindly. Or at least not in the way this is normally done. However I do have enough muscle memory by now that I can look down at the keyboard, put a couple of fingers in what roughly looks like the right spot and then start typing away with multiple fingers, from time to time laying focus in the center of the keyboard only.

The n900 had a _tiny_ keyboard. But it was practical to type are almost normal keyboard speeds. Unlike on a touch screen, where auto correct gets in the way.

N900 benefitted from tinyness, because thumbs could reach all keys easily. On modern-sized phone you'd need to stretch far more to reach the middle with thumbs

> where auto correct gets in the way.

Even without autocorrect (say, with Hacker's Keyboard on Termux), I still get frustrated by mistyped keys. "Up arrow" instead of space in bash, "o" instead of "p" in org-mode (with speed-commands).

I miss my N900 physical keyboard.

It is indeed faster and more accurate to use physical keys on a smaller device.

The competition is the exact same thing btw, with less screen and tactile feedback. Both will give you text thumb repetitive stress problems, but doing that on a hard screen will more so. Remember, this isn't theoretical, we used to use these all the time.

The drawbacks of a physical keyboard are in things like flexibility (you can't easily remap or change the size of the keys) and thickness.

The keyboard is actually a little bit too big for most hands, but I have been using this device for about 2 years now and generally it is a dream to type on. It took about a month to get comfortable with the layout but I can thumb type without looking at the phone. I have never owned a pure-touch based phone so I can't really compare to the modern touchscreen experience though.

Some handicapped people, like my wife, need a physical keyboard. My wife is happy with the keyboard in Blackberry Key2.

I don't know how this keyboard will perform but I use the BlackBerry Key2 as my daily driver and typing on the keyboard is such a satisfying feeling for me, I don't really think I am more accurate or faster though.

Added benefit of having a physical keyboard is having shortcuts.

It's worlds better than using a touchscreen keyboard, at any rate. I find those absolutely horrible to use and will buy phones with a phsyical keyboard as long as they are available.

See historical: Danger Hiptop, aka Sidekick

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop

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