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Ok this is more than a rant than anything else but I use the bowser for charts most of the time. It's been the best phone to do this by far without using a tablet. What I love is the keyboard scrolling but why not pinch and zoom using both sides of the keyboard as well. I find it a complete turn off that the keyboard does half of the job. I contacted different avenues of Blackberry requesting some sort of update for this.
Because pinch and zoom is a screen function for multi contact point screens, you can't do that with a keyboard.
It's still a good phone but it this bothers me so much that I wouldn't have bought the Passport if I knew the keyboard touch was that limited.
All keyboards are like that, no matter what device, it is a serial communications device which means one action at a time. It is just the speed of you doing those actions such as speed typing makes you think it is multi touch for which it isn't.
Passport is the ONLY device with a touch enabled keyboard. The touch capabilities aren't exactly the same as they are on a touch screen, but it's still an innovative feature.
OP- Perhaps BlackBerry will expand the keyboard functionality down the road...
Posted via CB10
What about using the shift/alt key?
the Passport keyboard is a major innovation in mobile technology (Of course, BlackBerry the company is not making the noise as an apple or Samsung would have) and i hope BlackBerry the company builds on it with subsequent OS updates and hardware iterations...i believe the pinch and zoom and many more cools stuff will still come to the keyboard
This actually may not be that hard to implement. Hope they add it.
Posted via CB10
There's always a way out... you can sell it if so unhappy with it
maybe apple will add it to their clip on keyboard?
Posted via CB10
If you use the I and O keys you can zoom in and out on most screens.
Posted via Passport The Beast!
One guess, is pinch to zoom is usually aimed at a certain point on the screen but you can't "aim" from the keyboard.
Just a guess
Good point.
Also, the passport keyboard isn't capable of multi-touch. If I recall it has only a single point capability
Exactly. You wouldn't get anything different from a pinch on the keyboard. BlackBerry's keyboard has a lot of functionality
It's ignorant thinking like that, as to why Blackberry in so much trouble today.
Posted via CB10
There is no point in suggesting 'a keyboard can't do that', LOL. Perhaps the keyboard can do anything BlackBerry wants it to do.
More than likely, that (pinch zoom) was already thought about by BlackBerry. Perhaps it can be accomplished through an update. It is a piece of hardware that clearly already has the capability to acknowledge the gestures used right now ('keyboard can't do that', lol) so maybe they can add other gestures later. Like, thumbs on the middle row going simultaneously together is the pinch to zoom, and simultaneously spreading thumbs apart would obviously be to zoom out, it would have to be very precise though.
Maybe the hardware is limited to the current gestures, but I wouldn't know that for certain. Does anybody know for sure that the Passport keyboard can't be programmed to include different gestures? Just wunderin'...
Either way, I have no problems with touching the screen to zoom in and out, seriously no big deal. Would it be cool to pinch the keyboard for zooming in and out? Yeah, totally. But does it really matter? Nope.
Posted via CB10
What else would you think of? Do you have a fix for that?