I think having a full keyboard and touch screen really is over kill. Really RIM needs to rethink that over some more as I don't think both go hand and hand.

Imagine if Apple put a full keyboard on their iPhone I bet none of the Mac Geeks would buy it because they would be too confused to know what do with it!

A.

The Pluto doesn't have keys...

Wirelessly posted (My name is Bubbles)

Ouch.

Well all the rumors and pictures from Rogers suggest the Pluto will have a full QWERTY keyboard plus a touch screen.

A.

It depends on the execution of the design I guess. Last time I checked, the palm pre was doin a pretty reasonable job?

I personally think it's a perfect idea. I LOVE touchscreens for navigation and such; zooming into pictures, scrolling, selecting things, etc. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of typing on a touchscreen; blackberry or iPhone alike. I would take a full-qwerty keyboard any day. So to combine a qwerty keyboard with a touchscreen is like the love-child of wicked and awesome. I can't wait =D

I think a lot of people would agree with that. My wife has an HTC Wing, and loves having the ability to type and dial phone numbers from the keypad and use the touchscreen for everythng else.

No need to be an ass. I think the combo of touchscreen and physical keyboard is one of the great things about the Pre. It seems to me that they do go together perfectly. You can use the screen to quickly tap on buttons or select objects, while you can use the keyboard to quickly type text. Best of both worlds as I see it.

How wrong you are. First a touch screen and physical keyboard would be great. Moving and zooming around a web page is a pain in the butt without a touchscreen. On the other hand, typing is a pain without a keyboard. A marriage of the two is a no brainer. Your shot at iphone users tells me your real purpose for this post. Many iphone users would love to have a hardware keyboard.

different folks, different strokes, to one their own. My opinion, a combo would do alot of justice, but personally, i will forever need physical keys, whatever they are paired up with, regular or touchscreen.

I think a full QWERTY and touchscreen is AWESOME. I think that is the only improvement that could be made on the Bold (besides it needs a 3.2 MP camera). I honestly can't wait to see what the "Pluto" will look like.

+1 Touch Screen + Keyboard.

Wish it didn't have to be a slider tho.

Touch screen and keyboard would be awesome.
Instead of a slider, it could be a clamshell, that would be cool.
Did the rumors include a release date and carrier ?

The original convergence device, the Palm Treo, showed that if you do it right it can be a great combo. The Palm Pre shows what happens if you make the keypad too small. The Storm with a full slide-out QWERTY keypad could be neat if they didn't simply add the thickness of a keypad to the current design. That's the trick - fit it into a sleek package without compromising away the functionality.

Wirelessly posted (My name is Bubbles)

An idea of what you mean by getting the thickness right, gone wrong, is the ATT 8125. Touch screen with slide out keypad and about the size of a brick, I have one.

Palm Treo was indeed way ahead of its time and I think represents the ideal for balancing screen size with text entry, navigation, and overall usability on a mobile device. In particular I think the directional keypad combined with touchscreen is much much better than anything RIM has offered so far, and I am a huge BlackBerry fan and love my Curve 8900. However the ability to hit a directional keypad 3x to get to a menu option that you have memorized is so much nicer than spinning a trackball and hoping you get it right and don't get stuck on a piece of lint. Plus the ability to use multi-touch gestures on a touchscreen makes web browsing, document viewing, and zooming a breeze. Optical trackpad is better than a trackball, but still I don't think will be good enough, unless they can figure out a way to recognize border touches as directional keystrokes.

So yeah, BlackBerry Curve 8900 keyboard + Palm Treo directional keypad + multi-touch touchscreen, in a Curve body sounds just about perfect to me.

One day of course someone will come up with a viable alternative to keyboard entry and devices will all go the way of the iPhone, perhaps with a foldable screen. Voice activation has made great strides but isn't there yet and obviously doesn't work well in a quiet environment. Maybe some combination of pupil-tracking and thought-transmission will be the sweet spot =)

Thought transmission would horribly reduce the potential market for a product nowadays.

full keyboard and touch screen, they cancel each other out in my opinion.

If there is more things to press or tap there will more things to go wrong. :0)

You know know how many times I have accidently put my own into the voice mode were it starts asking "say a command" when I put it into my BB holster to have to pull it out and tap the power button a couple of times. Having the screen touch sensitive with keyboard plus the extra buttons suggests to me from a marketing stand point that RIM really want their new Pluto to break more often, or people who are clumsy to switch to another device all together.

I guess but I bet RIM will leave out one key feature...the pen! :o)

Primerica and I am sure other companies are looking to or have relased applications that require a customer signature. Primerica uses the Treo devices to achive this without having to lug all that extra paper work with them, even though I personally would refused to sign my life to away to a PDA device. ;)

This is what I don't get now... After looking at the Crackberry.com video of the Storm 2 which is a Rogers GPRS (3G) device, I wonder if the Rogers 99xx Pluto device product info shots I have seen on the internet are fake because usually one cell network gets one of the new devices and the other cell network gets the other, as they usually enter into an agreement with RIM to exclusively offer the device for a year!?

While the screenshots around so far are almost certainly fakes (photoshop of bold and storm by the looks) the actual device will turn up at some point, personally I think it won't be till next year since the onyx is probably going to turn up at the ideal time for people wanting to upgrade their bold later this year.

A little bird whispered in my ear yesterday that the previously planned release of the Touchschreen Bold with QWERTY keyboard for the end of this year has been pushed back due to the Storm 2. Who do we thank? Apple.... The Storm 2 is the response to the iPhone 3gs. Thank you apple for your help in pushing back the release of a beautiful creation.

Although the Storm 2 is looking pretttttttttty good. And, on a brighter note, it will give RIM more time to perfect the Pluto. So it's not completely a bad thing.

I think your little bird is more than a little mistaken for a number of reasons, firstly the storm 2 was always going to be showing up as an upgrade to the storm and thats nothing to do with the marginal upgrade of the 3g to the 3gs, RIM wouldn't introduce a new form factor one year and cast it totally aside after that. Secondly storm and bold aren't aimed at exactly the same demographics so releasing one wouldn't prevent a release of the other as shown last year.

Out of the currently leaked devices, the one that would be most likely to push back a new bold-style device is probably onyx, despite its curve-size you have a pretty high-specced qwerty device going to multiple carriers that would appeal to a similar demographic to a new bold.

Forgot to specify; Rogers doesn't have a touch-screen Blackberry yet. The Touchscreen Bold was supposed to be for Rogers this year but is being pushed back and the Storm 2 is going to be released instead.

Rim do have a carrier in canada that offers the storm though, Rogers aren't big enough that they are supposed to get anything, they simply get offered suitable devices when RIM produce them nowadays.

...Rogers usually has a better phone selection than the other CDMA carriers. They lucked out with the Storm but Rogers still had the Bold long before that happened while the rest only had Curve. Rogers also had the Pearl Flip before the others offered it as well.

Rogers.com - Rogers Network Coverage

^^Rogers isn't small in Canada.

^^Rogers isn't small in Canada.[/quote]

No, Rogers is not small in Canada. But in an international context, their subscriber base (abt 7 million) is very small. They have a better selection of devices as a result of being the only GSM carrier in Canada, and GSM being the version most manufacturers offer first (Palm Pre is an exception).

I don't think they have any sway with RIM or anyone else beyond that.

Sometimes being the sole GSM carrier can be a detriment. Apple took a long time launching the iPhone here and I suspect it was because they didn't want to be held "hostage" to Rogers' monopolistic practices.

Nowadays RIM have a global view though, the main ones for them will be verizon and at&t along with the global networks like vodafone, t-mobile etc.