If you are using a recently released smartphone, you may feel very inconvenient when you do some basic tasks like typing a message or email. We can realize that most recent smartphones don’t come with a physical QWERTY keyboard, except BlackBerry’s phones and a few from other manufacturers. Most of them have similar design with just a touch screen and we have to input via a virtual keyboard. I’ve used some touchscreen smartphone and its typing experience is awful, I hardly can complete an email or message without some typos. I thought it would be easier when typing on large screens of 4.3 inches or 5.3 inches but it is not, don’t ever think about composing a long email or a blog post on your touchscreen smartphone.
Next generation touchscreen will embed haptics technology to the virtual keyboard. It is expected to deliver tactile feedback with various frequency, direction and intensity. Some mechanical engineers stated that our brains could be fooled and we would feel like typing on a physical keyboard. However, that’s the story of a few years ahead, virtual keyboard can’t entirely replace physical keyboard at the moment.
If you still want to use a big touchscreen smartphone, the combination of touchscreen and physical QWERTY keyboard would be the best solution. Samsung has just released Samsung Captivate Glide, a variation of the Galaxy S II. In my opinion, this is the best smartphone with side-slide QWERTY keyboard. The Glide is available right now on AT&T and you can purchase it on Amazon for $149.99 with contract. You can also get the unlocked version for $549.99.
In terms of tech specs, there is nothing to complain about. The Captivate Glide features an 1 GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU, 4.0-inch Super LCD multi-touch display, ultra-fast 4G connectivity, Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, 8-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash supporting HD 720p video recording and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. It will get packed with TouchWiz 4.0 and Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread (upgradable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich).
The best thing about the Glide is of course its QWERTY keyboard. This is a 4-row keyboard that is designed perfectly for people who compose text messages and emails on a regular basis. There is a little problem that the keys are almost completely flat, so if you use your finger nails on the keyboard, you possible can graze the metal grid around those keys.
If you are finding a smartphone with physical keyboard to increase your productivity, the Captivate Glide is absolutely my recommendation. What do you think about the phone?
Salman @ Tech Blog says
Awesome phone with cool side slide keyboard
As its from the house of Samsung, I have nodoubt about the specs ..Its awesome