No Nokias with keyboards

[lippidp]

At the very end of the Q&A someone asked if Nokia is planning on releasing a "QWERTY" phone (I think he meant a phone with a keyboard). The answer was no -- that trends are for touch screen only.

 

[Laura Knotek]

That makes sense. Adding physical keypads adds excessive bulk and moving parts that can break, especially in sliders. Most people aren't going to want to sacrifice screen size in order to get a device that isn't a slider, and nobody really likes the slider form factor.

 

[gedzum]

I agree. I owned the Nokia N900 and it served me well and the QWERTY keypad was a joy to use. But my major gripe with it was the bulk. On the other hand, the N97 (mini in my case) was an acceptable form factor. I wonder what a WP version of that phone could have been like. As Stephen Elop said, however, the trend seems to be going away from QWERTY so it's probably unlikely to see any more devices like that.

 

[St_Deborah]

I thought the E71 was pretty thin -maybe that was just for its time, though. I wouldn't mind seeing at least a new-style concept...

 

[SnailUK]

If Microsoft are truely going after business clients, then a physical keyboard would be a very good thing to offer on at least one phone.

It does supprise me that with all the various combinations of features, Nokia havn't tried to produce a keyboard phone. Maybe WP8 doesn't support it.

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

If Microsoft are truely going after business clients, then a physical keyboard would be a very good thing to offer on at least one phone.

It does supprise me that with all the various combinations of features, Nokia havn't tried to produce a keyboard phone. Maybe WP8 doesn't support it.

Absolutely. Don't see why this couldn't be the SurPhone.