We’d like to welcome yet another familiar face to the BlackBerry Cool team. RIMarkable’s Robb Dunewood will be weighing from time to time with opinion pieces that I’ve cheesily-dubbed the “RIMarkable Read”. Like what you read? Check out Robb’s home over at RIMarkable for more great insight into the BlackBerry world (but do come back).
Are QWERTY Keyboards Today Becoming The Digital Cameras Of Yesterday?
Do you remember when it was rare to see a digital camera on mobile device? It really wasn’t all that long ago that getting a mobile phone with a built-in digi-cam was the “hip” thing to do. These days it is harder to find a mobile phone without a digital camera than it is to find one with. Most consumers, BlackBerry users excluded, view digital cameras like voice mail. Just something that comes with the phone.
My question to you is… Are QWERTY keyboards today becoming the digital cameras of yesterday?
Many BlackBerry users today would tell you that they would never switch to a device other than the BlackBerry. I venture to say that a greater percentage of smartphone users that have come to rely on easy text entry facilitated by QWERTY keyboards, regardless of if they use a BlackBerry or not, would be willing to go back to standard alpha-numeric keypad.
Email, text messaging, SMS, IM, even document editing have become the killer apps of the smartphone world. To many people, myself included, email is as important to them as voice mail. Try responding to it from an alphanumeric keypad once you’ve become used to using your BlackBerry or other QWERTY keyboarded device. It is unbearable.
I challenge any BlackBerry user that has had their device for more than 2 or 3 hours to borrow the an alpha numeric mobile phone from one of the poor souls you know that has yet to move into the 21st century and send yourself an SMS message, or, heaven forbid, an email of 20 words or more.
As more and more devices come out, more and more devices have QWERTY enabled keyboards. I don’t think that it is a stretch to think that in a few years QWERTY keyboards will be as prevalent on mobile phones in general as cameraphones are in them today.
What do you think? Are QWERTY keyboards today becoming the digital cameras of yesterday?
