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Apple Testing Three iPhone 5 Prototypes, One With Slide-Out Keyboard?

Keyboard Buddy sucks

I have this blue tooth keyboard. Got it for x mas and its terrible. It unlocks your phone by itself, gets stuck on keys, and constantly loses connection.

I hope apple comes out with one because its a necessity because of the directional arrows.
 
Back when the first iPhone was announced, Apple made fun of the so called "smartphones" with those "fragile plastic keyboards", and then announced the iPhone wouldn't have that, instead it would have a multitouch touchscreen.

If this is true, they really have short memory. First they make fun of this keyboards, now they adopt them?
 
jpcanaverde said:
Back when the first iPhone was announced, Apple made fun of the so called "smartphones" with those "fragile plastic keyboards", and then announced the iPhone wouldn't have that, instead it would have a multitouch touchscreen.

If this is true, they really have short memory. First they make fun of this keyboards, now they adopt them?
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if it's apple's keyboard then it will be superior to anything anyone else has done :D:p
 
Honestly before recently becoming the proud owner of an iPhone I was apprehensive about not having a tactile keyboard. Now that I see how good the digital keyboard is on the iPhone.... It would be pointless to have a sliding keyboard. Absolutely not needed! If you want one I'm sure some case maker will provide but I don't see this coming on you next iPhone.
 
Nooooooooooooooo! A slide out key board? Really? Why dont we all go back to a bag phone. Actual keyboards are a dinosaur weather you like them or not. I use to LOVE the physical keyboard on my phone until I used my iPhone for a month. You cant just play with a virtual keyboard for a few days you have to use it for a month or two to really get how easy and great it is. You get tired of sliding out that stupid keyboard since texting is now so huge.
 
Kwill said:
Actually the Keyboard Buddy Case for iPhone 4 appears to be a pretty slick solution that also protects the glass back. I just don't believe there's a way to disable the screen keyboard when using the physical one to display more of the screen content.
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That's.. Apple for you
 
jpcanaverde said:
Back when the first iPhone was announced, Apple made fun of the so called "smartphones" with those "fragile plastic keyboards", and then announced the iPhone wouldn't have that, instead it would have a multitouch touchscreen.

If this is true, they really have short memory. First they make fun of this keyboards, now they adopt them?
Click to expand...

Your point is valid only if apple releases a "fragile plastic keyboard "

They won't.
 
Nah, not after Steve explained how the fixed buttons only have one use and are inferior to the touchscreen. It'd be a bit weird to include it too, but then I guess its kinda like implementing bootcamp on macs - saying the mac OS is far superior but also encouraging users to use the inferior Windows OS.
 
As long as it's done right, I would like to have that option, the on screen keyboard is fine for quick messages, but if your typing a long email it's deffinatly better having a physical keyboard. Also what the above poster mentioned about the nano needing one makes sense, though it'll be interesting since that would be going up against the newly announce hp veer.
 
What about a slide out touch screen keyboard?

Now that I would be interested in. Thin, and lots more typing real estate. Two lines of text while typing in landscape is frustrating.
 
ksgant said:
You are literally the first person that I've seen so far that's had a bad home button. Not denying that it happens, just saying it can't be that wide-spread.
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Really? There's a whole thread dedicated to it on the iphone forum.

I know my home button is pretty flaky. Kinda annoying but I'm paranoid if even if I get Apple to replace it that the new one might have something worse. It works, but not well. Half hte time when I double click to get the multi task bar, it single clicks. Sometimes it just doesn't register the click at all. sometimes it registers a single click as a double click.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

That is the dumbest **** I've heard. One of the best things about the iPhone is the lack of a dinosaur useless keyboard. Faster and much easier this way.

If you want a keyboard go buy a blackberry or one of the many androids out there and slide it out all you want.
 
So stupid that anyone would even repeat something like this as if it were.

Rumors are possibilities. This is an impossibility.

Anyone who thinks otherwise does not understand the company we're talking about.
 
Maybe you need to combine two rumors to make sense. The smaller iPhone and a slide-out-Keyboard. Think of it: A smaller iPhone would not have the full functionality as it's bigger brother, therefore could be slimmer. But an onscreen-keyboard would be way too small in portrait mode or take too much space on the screen in landscape mode as the display most probably also would be smaller. So where to put the keyboard (because, obviiously you need one to do things with the device)?

My imagination is that there could (would, should, will) be a small iPhone in the sense that it is only about half the width of the current iPhone, a stick so to speak. There, you really would need to address the issue of an onscreen keyboard both in portrait as well as in landscape mode. With a slide-out keyboard, you could use the small iPhone for writing emails, while still having the full screen size available for content.
 
Probably won't happen…

A slide-out keyboard on the iPhone probably won't happen. Apple likes design simplicity, and anything mechanical (slide-out keyboard) is prone to breaking. But, that doesn't mean that a mechanical keyboard isn't superior to the current iPhone keyboard.

Apple knows the iPhone keyboard is a compromise. That's why they have an algorithm to correct for mistyped keys. There's no tactile feedback. The keyboard has a parallax problem; anyone with monocular vision can tell you how challenging typing on the iPhone can be when the phone is tilted or shifted on any axis.

So, the slide-out keyboard isn't likely. I'd settle for some tactile feedback. It's on Android phones. World of difference.
 
I'm all for such a feature as I think touch-screen typing leaves something to be desired despite doing now for three years. But I think Apple would prove themselves total hypocrites to go through with it after people begged them for the feature and they basically told them they didn't need it. Now they do? LOL. :D
 
Emanuel Ravelli said:
Apple knows the iPhone keyboard is a compromise. That's why they have an algorithm to correct for mistyped keys. There's no tactile feedback. The keyboard has a parallax problem; anyone with monocular vision can tell you how challenging typing on the iPhone can be when the phone is tilted or shifted on any axis.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm surprised they don't handle this more.

If you hold an iPhone in one hand and type with the other, you tend to naturally tilt it in the direction of your typing hand, resulting in (for instance) right-handers often hitting I instead of O. You'd think with the accelerometer they could compensate more for this.
 
How about a slight vibrating feature for when we press the buttons in keys?
Steve Jobs was very passionate when he said that he didn't like the keys, and therefore i don't think there will be a Slide-Out keyboard.
Instead, i'm sure it's a phoney to trick people into leaking Apple information.
The main point of the iPhone in 07 was the touchscreen capabilities and lack of the "plastic junk".
 
An iphone with a slider keyboard would be the only thing that would make me instantly abandon apple.

First of all it would mean Steve Jobs had died.. So that would be sad...

Secondly it would mean they had lost their minds and started adding things that are going extinct to their hardware.

This has to be some kind of Ides of February Joke.
 
marksman said:
An iphone with a slider keyboard would be the only thing that would make me instantly abandon apple.
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You'd buy an Android or Windows Phone 7 just because Apple *added* a second model of phone with a slider? You do know that some models of those phones have sliders, right?

770052610_260.jpg

Why don't Apple fans like (or consider) the idea of having options available for people with different needs and tastes? Instead of "instantly abandon Apple", it would seem to be more reasonable to say that "I don't care if Apple adds a model with a slider, but I'll stick with the current style".

And please don't trot out the tired "remember the Performa" line. First of all very few people here remember the Performa (I'd bet that a majority of MacRumours fans were born after the first Performa was introduced...). Second, Apple has learned the lesson from the Performa, so you'll never see a repeat of a large number of models with very minor differences.


marksman said:
First of all it would mean Steve Jobs had died.. So that would be sad...
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We all know that day is coming, unfortunately it make come sooner rather than later.

And, also unfortunately, you may be right that Apple won't broaden their product lines until after that event.


marksman said:
This has to be some kind of Ides of February Joke.
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LOL - good one.
 
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Not sure why Jobs has such a disdain for miniature keyboards, having used one for several years its one of the few things I miss since getting an iPhone. I would like to see a comparison study of which is faster for most users, touch or tactile.
 
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