Ok, I admit that this might be a bit off the mark, but a little birdie had it delivered to my inbox this morning and I just had to post it. The idea of a slider or some sort of iPhone with an actual physical keyboard strikes me as intriguing. It is one of the main differences between the business-leader BlackBerry, and the more lifestyle oriented iPhone.
What do you think… Could something like this work? Would Apple EVER produce a version of the iPhone with a physical QWERTY keyboard?
The thing I think is dead-on about this mock is the HD part. I’d be willing to bet good money that the next gen iPhone will come with an HD display. Physical keyboard?… Ummmm, not so much… But if Apple wants to take a giant step towards chomping into RIM’s market, that might be one thing to consider.
I’d definitely go for one with a physical keyboard!!
This is reaking of FAKE FAKE FAKE!!!
The design look so unrealistic and looks like someone has 20 minutes to kill on Photo shop taking the HTC Touch HD, iPhone and wireless keyboard combined.
iPhone is NOT GOING TO DO THIS. ITS SO F**KING FAKE PEOPLE!!!
How can any website take this even half serious…….SERIOUSLY!
First of all, Apple will not be producing a slider iPhone in the foreseeable future. It would take away from the whole “we have multi-touch and you don’t, neener neener!” marketing angle.
Secondly, what would be the point of a 3.5″ HD display? Your eyes cannot resolve that level of detail. At 480×320, the resolution is already at over 150 pixels per inch. It’s possible they could push that to 720×480 (DV resolution, and a bit shy of 300 pixels per inch), which would approximate print resolution, but would it really be worth the added cost?
Ian,
Of course this is a fake… just look at it. However, I thought it would certainly spark some conversation. Looks like I was right!
The idea of it is interesting. And I bet some WOULD like to have a physical keyboard to punch out their messages. I highly doubt this would ever happen either… But hey, u never know… right?
I agree its interesting – honestly, I’d like the iPhone if it had a physical keyboard. I don’t own but have the unfortunate task of supporting quite a few iPhones and have grown to hate the onscreen keyboard. Multitouch is great, but the keyboard I just can’t stand due to lack of tactile feedback.
This is something Id’ definitely consider buying though, but I do agree with Wombat – HD on an iPhone makes no sense. Considering the size and density of the current screen, SD content has the illusion of HD as is.
> I’d be willing to bet good money that the next gen iPhone will come with an HD display.
I’ll take you money!. AppleTV strains to do HD, you think the next iPhone is gonna do it? Hahahaha! You think you can see HD quality on a screen that small? That ain’t gonna happen.
I also don’t see a real keyboard in the iPhone’s future. I think they are better myself (I tried the iPhone keyboard and hated it), but I really doubt you’ll see this from Apple. It’s pretty clear that they are going to stick with the virtual keyboard. They’ve sold how many millions of iPhones already? Obviously the masses don’t want a care about a keyboard. Maybe a third party will come out with an attachment, but you won’t get one from Apple.
Agreed Steve. BTW, love your gravatar.
A slider option would be nice, but I’d rather have the option of using a full-size Bluetooth wireless foldable keyboard like the Freedom Universal keyboard available to Blackberry and Windows Mobile users. The S60 platform has one as well. This is the only reason why the current iPhone is totally unacceptable as far as I am concerned. A pda phone with a small foldable keyboard allows me to leave the big laptop at the office when I travel.
No keyboard on the actual iphone design- never! Apple always takes big regard to usability, especially interface-wise…. for example You might have wondered why You never saw reduced key size in any notebook keyboards coming out of Cupertino. The answer is that the typing experience would have suffered- same reason why the iphone software keyboard has this prediction mechanism to spot which letter You really typed
- and now You want to tell me they bring one of those itsy-bitsy tiny typing keyboards just to get to a blackberry’s turf- absolutely inconsistent!
A possibility might be the much-rumored about eee-class notebook closing the gap between macbook and iphone… but also Macnuts idea is feasible… actually in former times I had a foldable keyboard I used with my palm- that idea worked great for me, maybe it’s gonna come back!
I’d expect to see a dual screen version first, ala the XO2 laptop. The second screen would be used as a virtual keyboard, as The Jobs has been quoted as saying he doesn’t like the idea of “…being tied to a physical keyboard”.
Personally, this would represent the near ideal mobile platform. An iPhone that’s maybe 1/3 again as thick as the 3G, that splits along the side or slides apart revealing the second screen. Add a card slot and you’ve got a world-dominating enterprise device.
This is never gonna happen guys! U know! U better take a look at the HTC Touch HD! Best phone coming soon! Next year comes a lot of super phones like iPhone but no slider!
*sight*
A physical keyboard would be a step back…in the picture it is probably a regular keyboard photo shopped into the iphone. the conrners of the two products dont even match lol. but i dnt think i would buy this version of the iphone is it had the qwerty keyboard in it.
Well that thing would be quite a step backwards.
Obviously someone just took a picture of an iphone and tacked on a macbook pro keyboard picture. I could do that in five seconds. Totally fake!
I love how the keyboards shape has squared off corners and the iPhone has rounded corners. Such a sad attempt.
http://blog.phoneslimited.co.uk/files/2009/03/i-phone.jpg -This is a much better effort.