Someone should just(TM) take the mechanism from a pinching phone holder (like [1] ), add the Bluetooth keyboard at the bottom, and make a universal phone keyboard extension...
I recently bought Samsung Galaxy add on keyboard, on a whim, to see if it would work with my iPhone. It sits over the screen where the onscreen keyboard is situated. On eBay it said “Bluetooth” but had no obvious signs of charging. Didn’t work with the iPhone. Next hypothesis was something clever with NFC.
Nope. Zero electronics. The reverse of the PCB has pads that fit over regions on the screen. On the front of the PCB, tactile dome switches short each pad through to a plane, presumably capacitively coupled to the hand.
(Edited for detail)
Why won’t anyone do this for iPhones? (Patents or market?)
My guess is 'you didn't look hard enough' or 'there were some but noone bothered to buy them and everyone stopped making them'. I was an avid sidekicker until the iphone2. I might have (lo 15 years ago) been interested in a slide out horizontal keyboard case for the iphone. Never happened, adapted and now with 'slide' keyboards never going back to chicklets.
So it's basically a membrane keyboard with plungers hitting the "contacts" which are the keys on the touchscreen?
My first concern would be tolerances - enough press to feel good, but not so far that you have to press too hard. Too short and you might accidentally press keys you didn't mean to.
Do you have a model/name/link of this? I'm having a hard time following the description but it sounds like it sits on top of part of the screen? What happens when you fullscreen a video or otherwise don't have the keyboard up?
I'd be surprised if Sony Ericsson didn't have a patent on it, because that was exactly how the numeric keypad worked on their early smartphones. They were resistive displays though, so they just required something hard on the back to register a touch.
I wonder how the microphone input and speaker ouput are affected with the keyboard cover. As shocking as it seems, not all iPhone users use AirPods for their calls.
With it plugging into the lightning connector, can't it just use the pins on that to bring the mike and speaker back out to extras built into the new device? Or are those not exposed in such a way as to allow it?
I wonder how this would feel in hand, grip seems to have unbalanced weight when I mimic on my iPhone pro max 11. Like it wants to tip over but maybe if you really have something physical at the bottom it is not that bad.
Blackberry sacrificed screen for the keyboard so balance was all OK.
I also caught myself thinking these buttons were too round and too tiny as compared to my on-screen keyboard. Also not having the luxury of seeing all my special characters appear on the keys when pressing the 123/#+= etc to toggle keyboards would be something to get used to. E.g. Type a {} or ~.
It’s fascinating that a fake podcast conversation is a potentially better way to communicate a sales pitch than someone talking directly at the audience. I’ll admit I was also wondering “Who is this guy talking to? Was this a clip from a podcast he was on?” Having never seen him before, my conclusion was he is a podcast guy, but then again maybe it’s a fake podcast environment purely for enhancing the marketing message?
I like having a physical keyboard, but not like this... it makes the phone too long. A slide out is preferred. I'm just going to stick with a regular bluetooth keyboard.
I want to throw it back even further to a Sidekick honestly. I never got to experience having one and I'd love a modern phone that flips open like the Sidekick does.
I've never stopped missing it. Every time I start trying to ~swipe some technical term that the keyboard won't get unless I've added it previously. Every time I type 'n' instead of a space. And more.
I was perusing the patents a few weeks ago and noting that some of them are coming up (but some were a few years out).
I liked my Sidekick, and the keyboard was pretty good. But honestly I've been pretty happy with how software keyboards have evolved, and I'm pretty sure physical buttons would just slow me down at this point.
However, one thing I'll continue missing from the Sidekick are the gaming controls. It had a horrible d-pad and buttons but at least it had them. They've been forced out of smartphones in the name of shaving off bezels and making the aspect ratio taller (eww). Give me a phone with a tiny d-pad and buttons please
I dropped mine less than a foot and the display broke entirely, six months ago, and they never shipped the "protection pack" with extra screen protectors and a hard shell case. Their support has yet to reply, much less quote an RMA. :(
I am in a similar boat. That thing is relatively fragile, with no options for cases/screen protectors.
I think the company is well on the way to going belly up. Too bad too, their devices all had promise, they just needed to have more iterations to get better. They were too small clearly to even produce a new iteration, they were all-in on new designs from the Gemini / Cosmo / Astro Slide and now on to ARM Linux computers.
Having used a Gemini PDA from the same company (Planet Computers), that sure looks much more usable. The Gemini has a keyboard that closes onto the display, which on one hand does protect both the keyboard and the screen when closed, but makes for a really awkward experience when you need to use an app that only works in portrait mode. Was really quite nice for bringing around for coding or connecting over ssh. Can't complain too much about the hardware but the software could have used some more polish. The option to boot Debian was neat but felt like a proof of concept, stuck at an old version (though seems like some people managed to get it to update[0].
A phone later I ended up getting a Samsung foldable (currently typing this on a Z Fold 3) and while I prefer physical keyboards, a split keyboard on the inner screen works pretty well in my experience.
I still have a HTC One M8 in use for Android bug bounty hunting, used it as my daily driver until 2020 thanks for LineageOS folks never letting it die. Those things were horrible to repair (sadly how many phones aren't these days) but amazing little devices. I still miss having a phone that size to be able to use comfortably in one hand.
I had one of those too - quite liked it. I think I got that one after I stopped using a nexus 4. I had a temp samsung galaxy s9 for about 6 months that I hated and then ended up getting a pixel XL and have only really had pixel phones since (pixel XL, pixel 3a XL, pixel 6a).
I do miss the slidy keyboards on my old HTC phones - I think the first keyboard slider I got was an HTC Touch Pro still running windows mobile 6 because android wasn't a real thing then. That one required so much fiddling and rom stuff that LineageOS would have seemed like a beautiful dream.
Man, the droid is still my favorite mobile device I’ve ever owned. Such a great form factor, and felt super cyberpunk - especially the droid 1 in the early days of smart phones. Shame Jony Ive won the design war, it’s all been flat black rectangles since then.
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As someone who grew up with the Blackjack and Sidekick phones I like this. I'll nitpick on a marketed scenario though:
> Launch Spotlight
> cmd + space
Cool that there's a keyboard but this is more easily done by just dragging the home screen down. There are probably more powerful hotkey combos they can pick for the marketing here.
Not exactly the same, but I much prefer using cmd+space on my iPad’s physical keyboard than the equivalent touch action. This goes for pretty much all the shortcuts, keyboard wins every time due to tactile feedback and predictability.
Is the idea that you always have this on, making your phone much longer (and potentially more unbalanced) than it was before, or that you keep it around for when you want to text? Seems like you always want to keep it on because you have to hook it up to the port, but you're adding a fair bit of length to the phone.
I generally enjoy Mr Mobile's reviews, but I just don't know about this product.
Ryan Seacrest had started a iPhone physical keyboard company, Typo I think, and got sued so bad he abandoned the whole thing. How will these people get around it?
typo pretty blatantly ripped off the unique shape of the blackberry keys that makes them easier to hit than normal mini keyboards. i'm not a fan of the patent system, but that seems like an actual novel thing that blackberry legitimately invented.
Doubt they have a patent for "keyboard on phones" (I had a nokia with a physical keyboard). Was probably because it was very similar to blackberrys keyboard (really looks like they just stuck a blackberry keyboard on an iphone) while this one seems more different.
I'd guess those patents would have expired by now. They only last 20 years, and you must file them within 12 months of a product coming to market including that invention or you forfeit the right to patent it. So any patents related to the 7000 line or earlier would have expired, and I don't see anything about this keyboard that is similar to later BB keyboards.
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 heavy as a modern smartphone.
The listed weight is 62-65g so its not appreciably more dense than the phone in my estimation, certainly not enough to greatly shift the center of gravity.
I both love this and am horrified. It looks like it'd turn a Pro Max into a 9 inch tall phone. Since it's a case, you'd need a new one each phone upgrade. (I used to do this with the Apple battery cases, until I came to my senses and/or magsafe.) Although, I still occasionally long for the blind accuracy of the old Blackberry keyboard.
I think I'd prefer an adjustable magsafe attached keyboard that can do either landscape or portrait, though. Sadly, I don't see ctrl, alt or arrow keys. SSH won't benefit as much.
All that said, if this were $50, I'd already have ordered it.
I wonder if a magsafe secured, size agnostic version could be made. Less locked in but easier to split across pockets and possibly works for more than one model.
This was my initial reaction, why have an entire case when it could be attached via magsafe. I wonder if it could be made to swivel/slide out of the way when not in use. Membrane keyboard could be super thin.
But also.... no, I don't think I need/want this. But a cool design exercise.
Bluetooth would require separate charging and a heavier design for an onboard battery. Not to mention needing to turn it off and on, or making it "smart" and only turn on when pressed, which slows down typing itself when you really need it.
This certainly must have been an option they explored. Without a case secured to the body of the phone, pushing the keyboard buttons would probably pop off the magsafe connection. There's a lot of leverage on those clicks.
And giving iPhone a physical keyboard is reinventing the blackberry. Never mind that the iPhone’s mantra from the beginning has been away from the inadaptability of physical keyboards. (Watch the 2007 keynote for reference).
RIP, I miss the Sidekick so much. Probably every millennial would have given anything to have one of these in 2001, but a data plan, the hardware cost itself, and exclusivity to T-Mobile placed it firmly outside the reach of everyone I knew including myself.
I think I went through several devices on warranty because it malfunctioned in some way.
Anyway, I just mention this because smartphones with keyboards are not new inventions, but fewer are being manufactured. I don't think I would get a smartphone with a keyboard, but I'd love to see more innovation in this space. I'm kinda tired of the whole "more, better cameras" and "more processing power" pattern we've been seeing.
Wow I guess it’s been long enough. The mid aughts explored this whole world extensively and it all sucked which is why we ended up where we are. Although watching video content wasn’t a thing the last time around so maybe there is room for improvement now…
Back then, I had a phone that had 2 separate slide-out keyboards: one for the digits, and one full qwerty. I didn't buy this monstrosity; my employer gave it to me for testing the app we were working on. Absolute madness, but also admirable that someone manufactured it.
I was a long-time holdout for landscape-mode physical keyboards. I owned the original ADP1 from Google, which had a decent keyboard. I then upgraded to the Samsung Sidekick 4G, which had an even better keyboard. After fixing the keyboard map, I installed a cut-down Debian userspace on it for mobile software development.
After that, I looked at buying a Motorola Photon Q, but I would have had to hack it to get it on my preferred carrier. Even then it would have been expensive. I think my next actual phone was a Nexus 4, and I eventually got used to swiping.
For overall typing and mobile software development experience, I've instead settled on relatively small and handy Chromebooks. This is even easier now days, because installing the Linux development environment is a few clicks.
My experience with keyboard components on Amazon in Canada is that they’re beyond prohibitively expensive. It’s absolutely insane. I could never wrap my head around why… Who’s buying it? I suppose impulse purchases because so many of them are hard to find otherwise, or you have to wait a while for batches?
There's a ton of amazon.com stuff machine-reposted on amazon.ca (plus a $$$ Fedex/UPS fee to get it to you quickly after they receive it themselves in USA).
A 16" 4K USB-C OLED display (with a touch sensor even). It works exactly as advertised and looks really nice but is rather useless for me, to be honest.
It's https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004110616192.html
I think a regular IPS display would be way less susceptible to burn-in when used as a dashboard display, though.
As for why I don't use it much: I thought it would be nice to have a second portable screen for my laptop instead of a proper desktop setup, but it's just mildly inconvenient to carry around and set up/pack away every time, and it offers way less usable screen area than a regular-sized display (unsurprisingly).
Anything where you're actually ok with all the NEUVWY branded junk on Amazon but want it much cheaper in exchange for possibly slightly slower delivery and a horrible browsing experience.
Or free if you're willing to put up with REALLY slower delivery. I ordered a 20kmAH battery with fold out solar panels off wish. 4 months later with it undelivered and tracking no longer active I requested and got a full refund. Two months later it finally arrived having gone the long way around the planet and held by Azerbaijani customs for several months.
did that with a showerhead, $80 on amazon, $30 on aliexpress, and it's actually quite well made (real metal) and seems to be great so far after a year. I'm sure there are a lot of duds though and it's caveat emptor, do at least a little research if you can find anything.
I fond them to have the same prices and mostly the same items but temu often doesnt have the really nice version of a thing thats basically from a “brand” in china
I get so much Temu spam that I finally gave up and decided to check them up. I compared 3 random items that the spam in Instagram was about - exact same items were 3x - 10x cheaper on AliExpress than Temu (~0.50 on Ali, ~5.0 on Temu, ~10 on Amazon). I haven't looked further but my impression was that they just ship stuff from AliExpress with a X price multiplier?
I've been on a physical iPhone keyboard quest since I got my first (4S). I have a pile of BT keyboards and one keyboard case. Still looking for something I would actually use. Indeed, my primary use case is for SSH (via Terminus).
I still have my iPhone 4S keyboard that I used stubbornly for months (along with the 4s itself). Every now and then I charge it and connect it to my PC via bluetooth, but even in landscape mode it was just too small for my sausage fingers.
I don't understand how a portrait mode keyboard will be any better, but I hope to be wrong.
The picture of the back of it made me think it was a keyboard separate from the case that plugs into the usb-c port with a long case that goes around it and has the buttons poke through. I could be wrong, but to do it that way makes more sense to me. The keyboard can’t be the full width of the Pro Max if it is a separate piece that works with any model so maybe not.
This will fail not because it's not a good idea, but because the implementation is flawed.
Ryan Seacrest (yes the Ryan Seacrest) bankrolled a startup 10 years ago with an almost identical product. (They were sued out of existence by an already dying BlackBerry.)
I remember listening to an interview where he explained they restricted the product to smaller iPhone models because user testing showed the product didn't work well in larger models - the increased weight of the larger phones caused too much of a bending moment whilst holding the phone by the extended bottom, making it extremely uncomfortable to handle and not conducive to typing. It was therefore restricted to the iPhones 5 & 6 only.
Recall QWERTY phones of yore were literally half the size or even smaller than the models this is targeting. I recently found an old BlackBerry cleaning out a junk drawer and was shocked by how small it was. It would fit inside my current phone and remember these phones had removable, user-replaceable batteries.
Not to mention this looks much cheaper quality than Seacrest's forgotten startup produced. Perhaps it's the children's toy-inspired design asthetic.
I wonder if you could make the key board overlap the lower portion of the screen, and when not in use, flip it down and around to the back of the phone. Would require some software and a clever physical mechanism that may not be easy or even possible though.
Thank you. As soon as I read their website claiming to be “the first creator keyboard for iPhone”, I was thinking “nope, there was one blackberry sued”. Hopefully they will update their website and remove the false claim.
Their website and marketing materials have a bit of a "Simpsons already did it" charm to them. Not to mention you will need specially designed pants to hold this roofing shingle-sized monstrosity. Maybe they can bring wearing overalls to the office into style.
There is no financial or any other penalty for keeping the lie there, so it won't disappear.
For years Omega used to write "the first and only watch on the Moon" on their Speedmaster watches, even though people kept pointing out over and over and over again that it's just simply not true - other watches were also used on the moon, including a Bulova Accutron when the nasa-issued speedmaster popped its crystal while on the lunar surface. So it was an obvious and easily provable lie, but for years it adorned a multi-thousand dollar watch. Omega did eventually change it with the new revision of the watch, but there is no reason to believe that it was because people were complaining about it.
You might be right, but that failure was an entire decade ago. iPads and other tablets have gotten more normalized since then so people no longer have the expectation that all devices fit neatly in a pocket. Likewise, that may change the expectation of how a device fits in hands and balances.
I'm not saying it will succeed - I agree that it looks awkward. But neither am I going to dismiss it just because something similar failed years ago. Times change, expectations change, and good product leadership will seek out old experiments and improve on the designs to overcome known problems.
I used one a few years back and it felt like magic in my hands. It was surreal to think how functional and efficient old tech was, yet we totally left it behind for something objectively worse. I get why we did, but wow, those were so much nicer to type on than a cold, flat, non-tactile surface.
Despite that, modern screens have become remarkably accurate and responsive. Autocorrect is pretty good and makes up for a lot of the slop. I can often type without looking at the onscreen keyboard, and that’s impressive in and of itself (not because of me, but because of the technology). The trade off still makes sense. Things were so much worse when we first left physical keyboards behind.
But like you I do love the idea of a phone with a good physical keyboard, still.
Everyone is different. I can type 10x faster on a touchscreen keyboard (on a phone). I remember being issued a Blackberry at work after iPhones had firmly established themselves and being horrified about how slowly I had to type. Keep in mind I'd had numerous Blackberries before and was generally happy with them, but coming back to having to depress a physical chiclet combined with less reliable autocorrect = endless frustration.
I don't begrudge pro-keyboard people their position, of course. It's a perfectly sensible preference (to the extent it's even my place to judge)!
564 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 329 ms ] thread[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpbsbLIU5f8
Obviously I am not the target demographic but I am interested to see where this goes.
I apologise. I am humbled.
How will this keyboard replace that for cursor movement?
Nope. Zero electronics. The reverse of the PCB has pads that fit over regions on the screen. On the front of the PCB, tactile dome switches short each pad through to a plane, presumably capacitively coupled to the hand.
(Edited for detail)
Why won’t anyone do this for iPhones? (Patents or market?)
My first concern would be tolerances - enough press to feel good, but not so far that you have to press too hard. Too short and you might accidentally press keys you didn't mean to.
It clips on the front of the phone. Has a small magnet that presumably triggers the onscreen keyboard to show and resize the visible screen.
Blackberry sacrificed screen for the keyboard so balance was all OK.
I also caught myself thinking these buttons were too round and too tiny as compared to my on-screen keyboard. Also not having the luxury of seeing all my special characters appear on the keys when pressing the 123/#+= etc to toggle keyboards would be something to get used to. E.g. Type a {} or ~.
I like having a physical keyboard, but not like this... it makes the phone too long. A slide out is preferred. I'm just going to stick with a regular bluetooth keyboard.
I've never stopped missing it. Every time I start trying to ~swipe some technical term that the keyboard won't get unless I've added it previously. Every time I type 'n' instead of a space. And more.
I was perusing the patents a few weeks ago and noting that some of them are coming up (but some were a few years out).
However, one thing I'll continue missing from the Sidekick are the gaming controls. It had a horrible d-pad and buttons but at least it had them. They've been forced out of smartphones in the name of shaving off bezels and making the aspect ratio taller (eww). Give me a phone with a tiny d-pad and buttons please
http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/wireless/detail-page/mo...
Although - good luck getting one. And once you have one, it's just OK. Missing some fit and finish both in hardware and software.
I think the company is well on the way to going belly up. Too bad too, their devices all had promise, they just needed to have more iterations to get better. They were too small clearly to even produce a new iteration, they were all-in on new designs from the Gemini / Cosmo / Astro Slide and now on to ARM Linux computers.
A phone later I ended up getting a Samsung foldable (currently typing this on a Z Fold 3) and while I prefer physical keyboards, a split keyboard on the inner screen works pretty well in my experience.
0: https://consummatetinkerer.net/upgrading-debian-on-a-gemini-...
If I drop this it will die and fat chance getting it fixed.
If Linux arrives I'll use it as a mini deck-thing, Android itself is absolutely shite to use with a keyboard.
I do miss the slidy keyboards on my old HTC phones - I think the first keyboard slider I got was an HTC Touch Pro still running windows mobile 6 because android wasn't a real thing then. That one required so much fiddling and rom stuff that LineageOS would have seemed like a beautiful dream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_4#/media/File:Motorola_D...
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lol, reddit is even more useless now
> Launch Spotlight
> cmd + space
Cool that there's a keyboard but this is more easily done by just dragging the home screen down. There are probably more powerful hotkey combos they can pick for the marketing here.
Those are the standard shortcuts all keyboards get, meant for keyboards on iPads that also work on iPhones and thus work here.
I generally enjoy Mr Mobile's reviews, but I just don't know about this product.
https://assets-global.website-files.com/6571c5a614be2a1a6376...
Ryan Seacrest had started a iPhone physical keyboard company, Typo I think, and got sued so bad he abandoned the whole thing. How will these people get around it?
Our patent system is so absurd. How can BlackBerry own the concept of using a keyboard with a touchscreen?
D685,775 expires in 2027. Whether it's relevant, only a lawyer can say. (https://patents.google.com/patent/USD685775S1/en)
7,629,964 expired in 2018. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7629964B2/en)
8,162,552 which expires in 2031. <https://patents.google.com/patent/US8162552B2/en>
I wonder if that is in part why Clicks has more colorful designs.
I think I'd prefer an adjustable magsafe attached keyboard that can do either landscape or portrait, though. Sadly, I don't see ctrl, alt or arrow keys. SSH won't benefit as much.
All that said, if this were $50, I'd already have ordered it.
But also.... no, I don't think I need/want this. But a cool design exercise.
This certainly must have been an option they explored. Without a case secured to the body of the phone, pushing the keyboard buttons would probably pop off the magsafe connection. There's a lot of leverage on those clicks.
Fixed.
It's an age-old sales tactic. "It's not a bug, it's a feature!"
https://www.t-mobile.com/devices/sidekick
It was a solid device, but it got sluggish pretty quickly. Not sure if it was because of my mom's usage habits or the hardware.
And my first android phone was the Motorola cliq
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Cliq
I think I went through several devices on warranty because it malfunctioned in some way.
Anyway, I just mention this because smartphones with keyboards are not new inventions, but fewer are being manufactured. I don't think I would get a smartphone with a keyboard, but I'd love to see more innovation in this space. I'm kinda tired of the whole "more, better cameras" and "more processing power" pattern we've been seeing.
I knew they were wrong, but I figured there would at least be a permanent market for some 5% minority who needed their chiclet keyboards. Wrong!
Honestly surprised that a device took so long to come to market… I’m not making any predictions this time.
After that, I looked at buying a Motorola Photon Q, but I would have had to hack it to get it on my preferred carrier. Even then it would have been expensive. I think my next actual phone was a Nexus 4, and I eventually got used to swiping.
For overall typing and mobile software development experience, I've instead settled on relatively small and handy Chromebooks. This is even easier now days, because installing the Linux development environment is a few clicks.
As if most of the originals aren't made in the very same factory in China.
If It's a big or $75+ item, usually prices are same as Amazon.
Why did you get it if it’s useless for you? Not being critical at all, more so curious how it turned out to be a bad fit.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005670832686.html
[Edit] Ah no, it says 4k in the title but the description is 1080p.
Try this
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006407747752.html
Here is today’s random example: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mr2D3Y4
Couldn’t find anything like that on temu
It's a bit crass but you can accept a few duds and still come out ahead. In my experience even the duds are good for a year or two.
I don't understand how a portrait mode keyboard will be any better, but I hope to be wrong.
https://www.frontgate.com/bluetooth-slide-out-keyboard-for-i...
Ryan Seacrest (yes the Ryan Seacrest) bankrolled a startup 10 years ago with an almost identical product. (They were sued out of existence by an already dying BlackBerry.)
I remember listening to an interview where he explained they restricted the product to smaller iPhone models because user testing showed the product didn't work well in larger models - the increased weight of the larger phones caused too much of a bending moment whilst holding the phone by the extended bottom, making it extremely uncomfortable to handle and not conducive to typing. It was therefore restricted to the iPhones 5 & 6 only.
Recall QWERTY phones of yore were literally half the size or even smaller than the models this is targeting. I recently found an old BlackBerry cleaning out a junk drawer and was shocked by how small it was. It would fit inside my current phone and remember these phones had removable, user-replaceable batteries.
Not to mention this looks much cheaper quality than Seacrest's forgotten startup produced. Perhaps it's the children's toy-inspired design asthetic.
This will fail.
For years Omega used to write "the first and only watch on the Moon" on their Speedmaster watches, even though people kept pointing out over and over and over again that it's just simply not true - other watches were also used on the moon, including a Bulova Accutron when the nasa-issued speedmaster popped its crystal while on the lunar surface. So it was an obvious and easily provable lie, but for years it adorned a multi-thousand dollar watch. Omega did eventually change it with the new revision of the watch, but there is no reason to believe that it was because people were complaining about it.
I'm not saying it will succeed - I agree that it looks awkward. But neither am I going to dismiss it just because something similar failed years ago. Times change, expectations change, and good product leadership will seek out old experiments and improve on the designs to overcome known problems.
This may or may not fail.
Despite that, modern screens have become remarkably accurate and responsive. Autocorrect is pretty good and makes up for a lot of the slop. I can often type without looking at the onscreen keyboard, and that’s impressive in and of itself (not because of me, but because of the technology). The trade off still makes sense. Things were so much worse when we first left physical keyboards behind.
But like you I do love the idea of a phone with a good physical keyboard, still.
I don't begrudge pro-keyboard people their position, of course. It's a perfectly sensible preference (to the extent it's even my place to judge)!
I feel like this is going to be ridiculously top heavy.