[--TommesJay--]

I want neither of those things. If the symbols are printed on the physical keys, I have to actually pull my fingers off the keyboard to see where they are. With the vkb up as a guide I can press the corresponding key without having to look.

Well this makes me think you never used a legacy BlackBerry keyboard. That was never an issue and became second nature very quickly.

[018125]

So, you are basically saying this:
You want that your virtual keyboard shows up a second virtual keyboard that tells you what virtual key press for symbol an punctuation, because with punctuation "printed" on the virtual keys you cannot see them and need to pull your fingers off.

Pretty much.

His arguments are getting more and more silly. I'm sure he'll come round eventually.

Posted via CB10

[fk2106]

User experience UX is one of the most important thing while designing a piece of hardware or software. They have to think, will the user get it? Does it make sense? is it easy? Do I like it?
I only follow BB from a distance but I do know that they seemed to be going up the curve with BB10, the Q10 and the Z30, lining up with the current trend of smartphone, which is, large 5", with a widescreen aspect ratio held vertically, touch screen key inputs to maximize screen size etc... It took quite a bit of research to get to that level and if the majority of manufacturers are going that way, it's because this is converging to a standard. Apps, mobile websites, movies are now all designed to have a widescreen aspect ratio, either vertically (Like a piece of paper) or horizontally. Think Facebook, Instagram. Heck even our eyes see at a widescreen aspect ratio naturally.
Unfortunately they may be going back down with the Passport.

Just like in computers today, square screens are unpopular (except at the ATM), Windows 8 is not doing that great, the keyboard hasn't been replaced in 50 years etc...

Not to be a Apple fan, but Steve Jobs redefined the smart phone back in 2007 (7 years ago) explaining why vkb makes more sense, as it is more dynamic and customizable. Now understanding that there are people that would still prefer physical keys, it totally makes sense that blackberry can target that market share, but they have to do it right. It may take a genius to build something and know it's done the right way, but it doesn't take a genius to know when something doesn't feel right. In this case, it clearly doesn't feel right to alternate between physical key press and virtual touch, and swipe gestures and .... .

And if you say it will take a learning curve, you would be wrong. Nowadays, we just expect things to work and be intuitive that even a 2 year old can pick it up and figure it out. It needs to be simple, easy and efficient.

"True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, 'Yeah, well, of course.' Where there's no rational alternative."

[slgta]

I want neither of those things. If the symbols are printed on the physical keys, I have to actually pull my fingers off the keyboard to see where they are. With the vkb up as a guide I can press the corresponding key without having to look.

It could be worse. On the Q5/Q10 the vkb for num/sym really does take up half the screen. On the Passport it's less than a third.

I am not suggesting we take away the virtual keyboard, but rather have an option to turn it off....for those who don't need to see it. For those who prefer to see or have a full 7 rows keyboard, they can leave that option on.

Posted via CB10

[slgta]

BTW, anyone know if the new keyboard on the Passport have any little bump on it for our fingers to feel which key we are on? Or is it 100% flat?

I understand that we cannot have the same custom shape to each key like the Bold keyboard....because we need to support gesture. But one or two simple dots on couple of the keys will make a big difference for typing accuracy. That's imo is another thing we cannot get from a virtual keyboard.


Posted via CB10

[deadcowboy]

Yeah...I don't....usually. Hands free are great, but in some cases when I have to look up something quickly...the password gets in the way.

(on driving while using phone)

Bad attitude.

I was following a guy in a 45mph area yesterday. SUV. He drifted halfway into the oncoming lane and I honked to get his attention, correcting. Luckily there was no oncoming traffic. I pull up next to him at the light, and he was just fiddling on his phone. 50ish year-old healthy, fit, successful looking man (nice suv), and he's fiddling on his phone like a stupid teenager. So irresponsible.

This sort of thing needs to stop. It's an embarrassment.

Posted via CB10

[Tim Heard]

All the more reason that if I'm going to be hitting the same key anyway that I would if the symbols were printed on the key that they *ought* to be printed on the keys. Then swipe for other function keys that aren't included.

Actually, with the num/sym keyboard up, the virtual num/sym keys are arranged in a duplicate to the PHYSICAL keys, and are labeled with the PHYSICAL keys that activate them. You can reach up to the vkb and touch the @ key, but you can also just hit the P key on the pkb instead. So, where you went ALT-P before, down-swipe-P will still do the same thing.

.

Just reading that makes me even more frustrated that there aren't numbers and symbols on the keys. ... There's clearly plenty of space for them.

[II ARROWS]

Heck even our eyes see at a widescreen aspect ratio naturally.

No, it's not. It's a circle. Your eyes are spheres.

[fk2106]

No, it's not. It's a circle. Your eyes are spheres.

uhmm... just google around, field of view or human eyes aspect ratio. This is like elementary school material. Is the windshield on your car square? eyes are spherical but you see at a ~1.8 aspect ratio.

You can determine the approximate shape of your visual field by looking straight ahead, and holding a hand out to each side and noticing where you can no longer see them. Do the same for above and below, and you'll see that your peripheral vision probably extends to about 180 degrees (or a little less) left and right, and about 100 degrees up and down. Your brow, nose, and cheeks narrow the vertical angle.

[--TommesJay--]

uhmm... just google around, field of view or human eyes aspect ratio. This is like elementary school material. Is the windshield on your car square? eyes are spherical but you see at a ~1.8 aspect ratio.

You can determine the approximate shape of your visual field by looking straight ahead, and holding a hand out to each side and noticing where you can no longer see them. Do the same for above and below, and you'll see that your peripheral vision probably extends to about 180 degrees (or a little less) left and right, and about 100 degrees up and down. Your brow, nose, and cheeks narrow the vertical angle.

Sooooo........when comes the takeaway where you clarify why this has any relevance for the ratio of a phone screen?

[II ARROWS]

Did you watch the video? Do you think it's relevant?

And anyway, your eyebrow can limit your upper vision, but your cheeks don't limit your bottom vision.
And you'd know it's completely irrelevant, if you watched the video.

[slgta]

(on driving while using phone)

Bad attitude.

I was following a guy in a 45mph area yesterday. SUV. He drifted halfway into the oncoming lane and I honked to get his attention, correcting. Luckily there was no oncoming traffic. I pull up next to him at the light, and he was just fiddling on his phone. 50ish year-old healthy, fit, successful looking man (nice suv), and he's fiddling on his phone like a stupid teenager. So irresponsible.

This sort of thing needs to stop. It's an embarrassment.

Posted via CB10

Agreed. It is very distracting indeed. And I am very bad in mulit-tasking to begin with, so I can't really text and drive. I love the bluetooth handsfree on my car now.....something I don't have back in the 8830/9000 days. Tried a few "drive-safe" apps back then, but they are not very good.


Posted via CB10

[fk2106]

Sooooo........when comes the takeaway where you clarify why this has any relevance for the ratio of a phone screen?

The whole idea is that widescreen are much better than square screens, not only because it's more pleasant to the eye, but most of the content nowadays is designed that way, either vertically (webpages, apps, paper) or horizontally (videos, photos).

But this is tangential to the topic here. My main point was that the physical keyboard mixed with a soft keyboard is not an elegant solution. Although I don't think there is anything wrong with having a physical keyboard though.

My second point was that the choice of a square screen is also odd but oh well, they probably have their reasons.

[fk2106]

Did you watch the video? Do you think it's relevant?

And anyway, your eyebrow can limit your upper vision, but your cheeks don't limit your bottom vision.
And you'd know it's completely irrelevant, if you watched the video.

I watched the video and it's off topic. He is talking about resolutions and not field of view. But anyways that's off topic.

My main point was that the mix soft keyboard / physical keyboard is not necessarily and elegant solution. from a UX perspective the user has to switch between touch gestures and hard presses.

and my second point was that a square screen is an odd choice because everything nowadays is tailored to fit on widescreen, weather it's horizontally (apps, paper, websites) or vertically (videos, photos etc...)

[--TommesJay--]

I watched the video and it's off topic. He is talking about resolutions and not field of view. But anyways that's off topic.

My main point was that the mix soft keyboard / physical keyboard is not necessarily and elegant solution. from a UX perspective the user has to switch between touch gestures and hard presses.

and my second point was that a square screen is an odd choice because everything nowadays is tailored to fit on widescreen, weather it's horizontally (apps, paper, websites) or vertically (videos, photos etc...)

Except anything other than video is tailored ****ty for widescreen.

It isn't just about screen ratio, it's also about physical size and size in pixels. Take a Galaxy Note 3 and hold it in landscape and you will miss out on the additional height (both physically and in pixels) of the Passport. Hold it in portrait and you'll miss out on the additional width.

[Thunderbuck]

I watched the video and it's off topic. He is talking about resolutions and not field of view. But anyways that's off topic.

My main point was that the mix soft keyboard / physical keyboard is not necessarily and elegant solution. from a UX perspective the user has to switch between touch gestures and hard presses.

and my second point was that a square screen is an odd choice because everything nowadays is tailored to fit on widescreen, weather it's horizontally (apps, paper, websites) or vertically (videos, photos etc...)

The user doesn't have to touch the glass often, except for some punctuation on the very top row. If you swipe down the keyboard, that brings up the num/sym virtual keyboard, but each of those keys maps to a physical one. You can see the relative position of the @ key and hit the corresponding physical key. Likely, within a week or two you'll have the most common ones memorized.

And as for that square screen, consider how you use a rectangular smartphone. You hold it upright for apps (most of the time), and hold it sideways in landscape for viewing photos and videos. With the Passport, the general intention is to hold it upright ALL the time. There's enough room and resolution on the screen to show a full 16:9 rectangle either in full height or horizontally, with letterboxing ("black bars").

If you've never lived with a BB keyboard phone, you don't know how nice it is to not have to reorient the device.

[Thunderbuck]

I am not suggesting we take away the virtual keyboard, but rather have an option to turn it off....for those who don't need to see it. For those who prefer to see or have a full 7 rows keyboard, they can leave that option on.

Posted via CB10

The num/sym vkb is only active when you've actually activated it. It's only there when you're typing a number or symbol.

What I think MIGHT be a cool idea is to give the option to the user to make it transparent, though.

[jojon2se]

There is certainly somehing to be be said for being able to see what sort of bucky bits you can get out of a key before you reach for any shift, or alt, or sym key.

Anyway; One thing I can't avoid reasoning, is that if it is the case that a swipe-activated toggle is to take the place of a key, for switching to an alternative keymap, it should preferrably be strictly, consistently, predictable.

What I mean to say with this, is that, say, a downward swipe on the left half of the keyboard should always bring up (...say) the numerals keymap, no matter where from you perform the swipe (no cycling through multiple keymaps - just directly to numerals, even if you're already there). This way you don't have to look to see what you get, and evaluate whether to keep cycling -- it may seem like a very insignificant thing, but can really mean a lot to your "flow" (...spoken by one who finds himself annoyed with the oooverwheeeelming effort of having to swipe between the keypad and function pages of the BB10 calculator app :P)

This means one might have to find other ways to perform functions that would otherwise share the down swipe. I could imagine something like an upward swipe all the way from the bottom edge (again consistently) bringing back the alfa keymap (as opposed to swiping up from a position on the keyboard, to select a predicted word).
Maybe it could be ok to have cycling keymap pages for less common symbols... mapped to, e.g, downswipes on the right half of the keyboard...

Just reasoning and speculating - little harm in that. :7

Incidently; I wonder whether the three-rows-plus-contextual layouyt might make it to all-touch devices in future OS updates...

[018125]

The user doesn't have to touch the glass often, except for some punctuation on the very top row. If you swipe down the keyboard, that brings up the num/sym virtual keyboard, but each of those keys maps to a physical one. You can see the relative position of the @ key and hit the corresponding physical key. Likely, within a week or two you'll have the most common ones memorized.

And as for that square screen, consider how you use a rectangular smartphone. You hold it upright for apps (most of the time), and hold it sideways in landscape for viewing photos and videos. With the Passport, the general intention is to hold it upright ALL the time. There's enough room and resolution on the screen to show a full 16:9 rectangle either in full height or horizontally, with letterboxing ("black bars").

If you've never lived with a BB keyboard phone, you don't know how nice it is to not have to reorient the device.

If the Passport is designed to be used "upright ALL the time", why does the keyboard turn into a scrollbar when the Passport is turned landscape?

You have shown a continued misunderstanding of both the Passport and current devices which you claim to own.

You've also conveniently ignored many of the questions posed at you, and continued your blind and illogical defence of this device.

Posted via CB10

[jojon2se]

Here's a nice little challenge for our mockup-making inclined members, by the way, should such whet their apetite:

Produce side by side comparison pictures for a number of application types, in 1:1, and 16:9 both in portrait and landscape orientation.

I have a feeling that the square screen (...now that we have one that is large enough) will fare particularly well with things like "print" type media (like a majority of pdf:s), web pages, and maps, providing a comfortable ratio of clearly readable and overviewable content.

For video; Letterboxing may be ugly, but I like the notion of having the interface pop up in the black bar areas, rather than superimposed on the video, and really have a hard time getting an image out of my head, of video above and timeline-based non-linear editor interface below.

I hope we will get per-app user-configurable "compatibility mode" settings, so that you can let a well behaved, dynamically reflowing, BB10 or android app make the most of the screen real estate, whilst e.g. (EDIT: You choose behaviour) have one that is "hard-coded" to 16:9 and switches wildly back and forth between portrait and landscape for different pages of its interface, be letterboxed and automagically reorient itself, so that you don't have to turn the Passport around.

[--TommesJay--]

If the Passport is designed to be used "upright ALL the time", why does the keyboard turn into a scrollbar when the Passport is turned landscape?

It's an option for better scrolling. Which doesn't change the fact that it's square and can therefore be used portrait all the time. Other than for scrolling it doesn't make sense to go into landscape mode.

....which is stupid anyway. Here's hoping scrolling is always possible and it's just a recommendation to do it in landscape as it delivers more vertical space to scroll.

[018125]

It's an option for better scrolling. Which doesn't change the fact that it's square and can therefore be used portrait all the time. Other than for scrolling it doesn't make sense to go into landscape mode.

....which is stupid anyway. Here's hoping scrolling is always possible and it's just a recommendation to do it in landscape as it delivers more vertical space to scroll.

Right, but just the fact that there IS a Landscape mode AND they've implemented specific functionality while in Landscape mode, contradicts what Thunderbuck is saying.

Sigh, I think I just need to take a deep breath and stay off CB10 for a while, that guy gives so much bad advice/info it's driving me crazy.

Posted via CB10

[II ARROWS]

The user doesn't have to touch the glass often, except for some punctuation on the very top row. If you swipe down the keyboard, that brings up the num/sym virtual keyboard, but each of those keys maps to a physical one. You can see the relative position of the @ key and hit the corresponding physical key. Likely, within a week or two you'll have the most common ones memorized

Except that comma and other frequently typed punctuation marks are not mapped to a physical key, and force you to tap the screen, only when the field feels like to show it to you.

I watched the video and it's off topic. He is talking about resolutions and not field of view. But anyways that's off topic.

I'm sorry, but it is... you are the one who said that your "eyes see at a widescreen aspect ratio naturally.".
So what? Now that someone proved you wrong it's not important in the discussion anymore?
That video, which you didn't watch, says that your eyes concentrates all the useful information in a very small point in the center, and the rest is low resolution and it's not on clear. Further you move from the center, the more blurry it becomes (in exchange, it's more sensitive to light).

And because of that, it's not important for a phone.

[CeCoQ]

Except that comma and other frequently typed punctuation marks are not mapped to a physical key, and force you to tap the screen, only when the field feels like to show it to you.
I'm sorry, but it is... you are the one who said that your "eyes see at a widescreen aspect ratio naturally.".
So what? Now that someone proved you wrong it's not important in the discussion anymore?
That video, which you didn't watch, says that your eyes concentrates all the useful information in a very small point in the center, and the rest is low resolution and it's not on clear. Further you move from the center, the more blurry it becomes (in exchange, it's more sensitive to light).

And because of that, it's not important for a phone.

The comma and other frequently used punctuation are also mapped to a physical key even though it's also at the bottom.

Posted via CB10

[jcarlos100]

Man hope they keep the keyboard can't wait to try it

Posted via CB10