It is a major deal. I have gone from a 800x480 screen on a N900 with hardware keyboard, to a 800x480 screen on a ZTE Blade, and the virtual keyboard IS a big deal.

In Android, there's nothing 30%ish about it, either. I'm looking at the Android web browser right now, and in portrait mode landscape mode it takes just about 50%, in landscape mode, you see nothing of the webpage except the input field, something like two thirds is virtual keyboard.

My typing speed with the keyboard that comes with cyanogenmod is around 10% of what I do on the N900 keyboard. Moreever; the bad input capabilities of the touchy feely Android-phone makes me not want to input anything, I hardly even care to look at it to see if I've got missed calls.

Android is no Maemo, that's for sure.

As opposed to a real, pressure level sensitive screen where you can use accurate input devices. The resistive touch screen on the N900 was bad enough, now that I have to use a capasitive screen, it's ten times worse.

And if you don't see the smudges, that's because you forgot to clean your glasses. Smudges is, in addition to nasty looking, a layer of oil that distorts the light that goes through it, nomatter how good a screen. Who cares about that crisp resolution when the end result is a blurry mess that causes your eyes trying to refocus and refocus. Also, most of the time when I try to wipe a smudged screen, it just redistributes the finger/face oil instead of removing it from the screen.

Really. Smudges look bad and it's bad for your eyes.

Throughout all of the 90s and 00s I would scold anyone who put a finger on my computer monitor, because smudges are bad. Now people pay extra for the inability to use styluses? Someone's PR department fooled them real bad.