The 3-row keyboard on the N900 isn't all that great. For starters, the position of the space bar is quite odd. It can be used naturally with right hand only. Next, the arrow keys are just normal buttons and placed on the wrong side for gaming purposes. Users with localized keyboards don't even have all the arrows.

The most obvious solution to this is to make the keyboard of the next Maemo device 4-row and equip it with a proper d-pad placed on the left side of the keyboard.

I made a draft that shows what the keyboard would be like if I designed it. It is a scandinavian variant of the keyboard because that is what I would be using.



It's made rather quickly so there might be some oversights and errors. That just means that feedback and suggestions are very welcome!

I had an N97 for several months which has the spacebar on the right side too, and actually had no problems at all with its positioning. I know it looks odd on photos but when you actually use it it works fine, or at least it did for me. This isn't a PC keyboard so the usual rules about positioning don't apply.

That's amazing!!! I want this on my next phone!!!

Another suggestion for a better keyboard:

Design a nice "blank" keyboard with OLED-lit keys which load the keymap from firmware upon boot, and which could of course be switched to another layout as desired, on-the-fly.

While such an OLED-lit keyboard might be slightly more expensive to build initially (although Nokia would definitely benefit from their economy of scale), there would also be significant "value-added" savings post-manufacturing, e.g. in terms of maintaining local stocks of said keyboards. Also, as a very large global company Nokia has to currently deal with a large number of different layouts and they still can't cater to many markets (including some very large languages/scripts).

Of course, the new standard OLED keyboard would also be naturally back-lit...

Open-source OS will also enable anyone to create keymaps (and translate the OS) without the "articificial" restriction of needing approved/manufactured fixed-key keyboard.

Wouldn't this kind of flexibility be a great Unique Selling Point?

On-screen virtual keyboards already provide the input flexibility, but at the cost of using most of the screen real estate in order to be useful. A customizable physical keyboard on the other hand...

Sounds good Peet, the OLED keys could even act as an extra screen

Screw OLED keys, how about a standard, easy-to-use config file (or program) to remap the keys. As well as for remapping the on-screen keyboards. Yes such things exist, but they are painful to use and very much non-standard/logical.

i would go with e-ink rather then oled, as it would save battery...

Just shows how out of touch I am about existing display technologies, let alone those just around the corner...

In this case even greyscale would probably be unnecessary (keyboard keys with hinting...?) and we'd only need cost and power efficient B&W modules with reasonably high contrast ratio.

Serious modders could always build themselves steampunk versions modelled after those old flight status panels at airports.

Or if we were to follow Duffer's line of thought (keyboard as an extra screen), how about a plain thin pull-out touch screen as a virtual keyboard yet without stealing valuable main screen estate? So there'd be no tactile feedback, but it'd still be flexible to configure, slimmer than a physical keyboard and possibly cheaper too.

The steampunk version of this could incorporate a crank of the side with which to roll out a flexible touch screen mat...

Actually they're both existing...eink has already been used in a phone keyboard (look through your googles for the Samsung Alias 2) and oled for a desktop keyboard (the somewhat ambitiously named Optimus Maximus, no, I'm not joking, goolge!). I'm with you on the eink, and to be honest if the issues with tactile feed back could be addressed, I'd prefer an eink touch screen rather than individual buttons, again, if the haptics were sophisticated enough.