The idea of having a hardware keyboard for IT was very much debatable on this forum prior to n810 release with about 50/50 split between users.

I was sceptical myself, until I tried and used the keyboard for a while. And it turned out to be a very useful and much missing feature.

HOWEVER, the implementation as it turned out to be is far from perfect. Here is why:

1 [-] As many pointed out, each individual key is sitting too close to each other and hard to distinguish from each other by your fingertips.

2 [-] The keys are flat and hard to press quickly.

3 [-] The keyboard is asymetric - the round navigation button takes 20% of the valuable keyboard space - you end up having less keys that are jammed together, AND not having the navigation round button next to the screen ruins web browsing or e-book reading experience alltogether. You have to have the keyboard open for navigation whether you like it or not.

4 [+] Having keyboard is very convenient and addictive! And I think the keyboard should become an integral part of IT.

5 [-] Typing long messages on asymetric keyboard will eventually give you carpal syndrome - guaranteed.

6 [-] Personally, I want to see keys for '|', 'Alt', and '`' since with have XTerm as a standard utility application.

7. It would be cool to have a couple of function keys as well so that applications can assing custom actions to them.

8 [-] Integration of hardware keyboard gets in the way of on-screen keyboard with that horrible 'shift-notifies' black back that is so annoying and takes so much of the screen realestatet. I know that you can disable it via Settings, but as of today, this setting is flaky and some applications manage to restore it! If you absolutely need to have convey that information to the user, then use a half-empty Task navigator area. Show the mode of the functional keys there. Better yet, provide a clean API (unless I missed it) to the application developers so that they can embed that information in their own toolbars. As for the 'word completion', it you absolutely have to show it, then make it transparent so that the entry dialogs are not jammed and resized all the time.

9 [+] I like the way keyboard slides out and feels well-attached to the unit. And I appreciate very much the fact that an addition of the keyboard raises the unit above, making it easier to read from it (it gives greater degree of view angle you can adjust to).

The bottom line: I praise Nokia hardware engineers for taking a step in the right direction. The implementation, however, needs more thought and work and I hope that we will get a better keyboard (and perhaps a better GPS chip) with n900.

--Vlad