IMO, phones on belts look worse than being a geek, they make you look like a suit (since that the majority of people I see with phones on their belts). Looking like a suit makes you look like a lawyer … and we all know that’s not good.

As for breaking — not all keyboard phones have sliders or folds. The Nokia E61, E62, E61i, E71, E73 are all non-sliding/folding qwerty keyboard phones. Same with almost every Blackberry.

I personally didn’t have any issue going from an 8525 to the iPhone. And I liked the keyboard on the 8525 and didn’t think I’d like to use the virtual keyboard. The later comments about bluetooth are right on – why can’t I just pair my wireless Apple keyboard with my iPhone? Probably because if I’m going to carry around that keyboard I might as well carry around my laptop.

I think this is all pretty personal in the end anyway. I just don’t need to type that much on my phone, so there’s no value in the hardware keyboard. If I used my phone more for that purpose, I could easily see changing my mind. Of course, a broken phone is of no use to me, so that tilts the scales in my experience.

Of course I am coming at it from an email, terminal, SSH, world. My 18 year old has a HTC Dream and hates my keyboardless phone but he logs more minutes texting than talking. My daughter can text faster on a T9 keyboard than I can type on my phone. I really comes down to how you use the phone.

I suspect that a number of you are right and that as time marches on the on screen keyboards will get significantly better, especially if manufacturers start to include some/better forms of tactile feedback.

My biggest issue will likely continue to be screen real estate… until some manufacturer decides to add a second slide out touch-screen to their phone.

As for Mickey’s comment about the use of a stylus, although I believe that inking is a far more acceptable social experience than typing, particularly on larger devices, I find the current screens just too small to be truly useful for useful for inking more than a few of characters at a time.

The secret? They’re e-ink. They’re intended to change between standard 12 key number pad format for one orientation, and qwerty key format in the other orientation. But, if the concept can be applied to press-able keys, then you could easily have 1 keyboard that’s set up for QWERTY, QWERYZ, AZERTY, and other language formats.

That sounds far more useful, to me (who does a lot of typing on my phone), than virtual keyboards.

For keyboard _feel_, I have yet to use ANY virtual keyboard that was worth a damn. And I do a LOT of typing on my phone. A virtual keyboard just isn’t up to the task.

Though, the first problem I see is: mechanical reliability of the connection. If you break a connector, especially if you break it while attached, you may have just sacrificed one or both of the devices. Or what if the connector is flakey? It might all turn out to be too difficult to do well, and if it’s not done well, it might be far worse than not having the option at all.