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Whatever your rabid opinion of touch vs physical keyboards is, it is true, the iPhone does not have a real keyboard.

And I don't get where "untouchability" comes into all this. Just to get a sensational headline ?

I have some interesting observations on the "upvoters"

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It does look like most of the "people" above have been voting up links emanating from "techdusts.com" but I could be mistaken ;)

Yer.. bit of a non-story. Everything's going touch? Only when you pry my old Honeywell keyboard from my cold dead hands.

Re the upvoting, you may be right pt93903 - it be interesting to see how DZone is being "gamed". I suspect quite a lot, given the apparent ease commercial shills have rising to the front page - I don't mean this article, just some of the obvious spam that still gets a truckload of up votes.

I've been randomly digging around the past month, I can certainly confirm your suspicions, there are a few other offenders.

And about this particular link, just browsing through this and looking for the names I posted should convince you: http://www.dzone.com/links/search.html?query=domain%3Atechdusts.com

Virtual keyboards fail because of the LACK of touch. A touch typist gets their speed because they never look at the keyboard, which can't be accomplished if there's no tactile feel from the buttons. At first you may think this not relevant when talking about these miniature keyboards, because your obviously not going to touch type using them, but the tactile feedback is still very relevant. A slightly different example, I can easily make a call with my "dumb phone" using speed dial without ever looking at the phone, which saves time and can be important in some situations. Can't be done with a touch screen easily (some form of gesture recognition could be used, I suppose, but you still need a way to initiate the whole thing). Lack of a set of keys is actually one reason I've not yet purchased an iPhone, making the commercial very valid and relevant to me.
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