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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I had the T-mobile G1 with the slide out keyboard. Loved it!!

I thought it was the G2? I had the one with the z-fold keyboard that slid out on the long edge (landscape). I loved that keyboard. I could crank out long emails error free, unlike every other touch screen keyboard, like the one I’m using right now.

G1 was the original Tmo android phone with a slide out keyboard. G2 was the HTC Desire Z with the amazing z-hinge keyboard.

I had an N900, and the keyboard was reasonably good to type on. The keys were shaped in a way that made it easy to hit only the key you wanted, without hitting adjacent keys.

The slide out horizontal form factor is so obviously superior, I’m scratching my head wondering why people are so nostalgic for blackberry keyboards.

I had a few slide out phones and a few BlackBerry-style phones (not BB but Nokia) and I had zero issues with either. You could type a novel on any of them.

(I’m typing this on an iPad Mini and it’s really sad how terrible the experience is compared to those tiny phones with tiny keyboards that actually worked)

An iPad seems closer to a laptop than a phone for this sort of thing—Bluetooth keyboard time. The iPad mini is in an odd spot size-wise, though.

Vertical keyboard allows using the phone with one hand.

Also landscape results in either lots of wasted screen space or hard to read text. FOr text you want tall and narrow(ish), not ultra wide.

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