So there I was at the launch of the Nokia N95, chatting to a fellow journalist. He turned out to be from a men's magazine (writing the gadgets column), so his perspective on anything announced wasn't going to be an in depth expose of free RAM or missing Bluetooth profiles. We're talking a picture and a hundred words tops. (The same applied to most of the other journalists in the room, I suspect, from national papers and other print publications - I felt rather the odd one out, as someone who'd perhaps write 20,000 words on the N95 over its life rather than 200 - but I digress.)
As you do, we got our 'phones out and compared notes. He seemed very happy with his Nokia N70, a position I can quite understand since I loved the N70 while I had it, too. Great camera, oodles of RAM, etc. But then I whipped out my Nokia E70 and demonstrated the fold-out qwerty keyboard, explaining that the E70 had the same functions and great camera as the N70 but with the benefit of a keyboard as well. He typed a sentence on the E70 (slowly) and then came the shock.
"I can't just can't get my head around qwerty keyboards on phones". Point blank. Not interested. The whole concept dismissed in a microsecond.
"But, but...." I spluttered, "You can enter text much faster than using predictive text on a traditional keypad... It's great for emails and writing notes..." But he wasn't really listening, he seemed 100% sure that a keyboard was completely and utterly misplaced.
Now, before hardened T9 fans shout out, I should point out that I wasn't expecting him to say "Oh, wow, I must get a keyboarded smartphone tomorrow!", but I did think I'd hear something along the lines of "Interesting - I can see that the full keyboard could be quite useful, but I'll stick to my smaller phone for now, my keypad is quite good enough for my use". Which would have been fair enough, the range of form factors in the smartphone world at the moment is very wide and there's something for everyone.
I think that underlying this exchange there's the continuing under-appreciation of what a smartphone IS. To my lad-mag acquaintance, his N70 was a fancy phone with a superb camera, MP3 player and good compatibility with the games he wanted to run.
To me, the N70 is (to borrow Nokia's own phrase - and I can quite see where they're coming from) a 'multimedia computer', with lots of RAM and a truly extensible OS, enabling a dozen or so applications to run simultaneously, with instant switching, good web browsing, comprehensive email support, Office file editing (using a Bluetooth keyboard), decent PIM functions, in addition to the benefits already mentioned.
With this, second, viewpoint, the advantages of a keyboard become more apparent, which is why, to be able to have all the above plus faster text input using a full qwerty keyboard (in the E70) seems like an obvious benefit to me (see also 'Gotta have QWERTY'). And I'd expect even an impartial user to admit that a keyboard might be useful. Whereas a keyboard on a 'phone', with just music player, camera and games, must seem like an irrelevance, as to my acquaintance.
So we're back to the 'smartphone is MUCH more than a phone' discussion once again. Nokia's 'multimedia computers' (in their Nseries range) and 'powerful networking devices' (in their Eseries range) are a hard-hitting attempt to shift the terminology. Sony Ericsson stick to my favourite, the simple 'smartphone', hoping perhaps to educate users (and journalists) through sheer weight of features. HTC, in the Windows Mobile world, go for 'PDA phone' for their larger units and 'smartphone' for their lighter ones.
Whatever they're called, I've a feeling that general awareness will always lag significantly behind the bleeding edge though...!
Steve Litchfield, September 2006