[bigman2]

it was funny that there was a poll thread about if RIM should do this and people voted no and i was like... "why not?" its like voting to just keep something away from people who would want it. like, if you are going to leave it on, fine, but why vote that RIM not let others turn it off if it doesnt affect you

Because it WOULD affect us. It would add considerable bloat to the OS, introduce the opportunity for a whole slew of new bugs, it would be a much bigger undertaking than most people think and would seriously delay the next official OS release unless you were willing to wait for the next one. You also severely break the UI's consistency if you opt for a less dramatic approach of simply making the keyboards able to be touch only. Users would then be faced with an OS that requires a click in some places, but doesn't in others.

Those are the main technical arguments. On the less technical side, SurePress is RIM's major innovation to the touch screen world. Like all good new ideas, it's one of those that seems incredibly obvious once someone comes up with the idea. It's a defining feature of the phone, and probably the first thing most people think of when they think of the Storm. This is EXACTLY what RIM wanted when they made the decision to put SurePress into the phone. They could just of easily made a pure touch screen device, but if you'll allow a small biblical pun of sorts... They wanted something with which to part the seas of Jesus Phone knock offs. SurePress does that, and at the same time adds a lot of consistency back into the touch UI. You don't have two UI actions tied to the same behavior anymore.

[mxrider821]

it was funny that there was a poll thread about if RIM should do this and people voted no and i was like... "why not?" its like voting to just keep something away from people who would want it. like, if you are going to leave it on, fine, but why vote that RIM not let others turn it off if it doesnt affect you

Exactly... Thank You

[moosc]

For everyone saying opera is better because its none click that's because its not designed for the storm
Maybe instead of whining about the click how about u practice its hands down better then touch. Pn other BB you have keys that click I tried a curve and I type better on the storm

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[camarofever]

I think that surpress is a great feature it doesnt affect my typing in any way. i used to have the dare nd my g.f still does i picked up her phone the other day and went to click the screen . im soo used to this feature now .

[Terrigno]

Disabeling it might not be bad but I love the click through experience. It feels really good on the phone and truely does feel like seperate buttons, or more stronger vibration effect. You have to understand something though. SurePress is what MADE the phone. People and RIM were excited with that technoligy so thats what mainly made the phone sell. So it just might be pointless to be able to disable it. Just do like I did, buy an IPOD TOUCH seperate to do most stuff on lol.

[niSmo.]

Even though SurePress is the foundation on which this phone is built, I would like to see a disable feature in the upcoming updates. It could not really hurt anyone, if you love SurePress never disable it. As for me, it would be much easier to type in the new QWERTY on portrait (like the iPhone's)without SurePress.

[mdude85]

It should be selectively disabled -- for instance it should be disabled for typing but enabled for buttons/links/etc.

[bigman2]

And again for the people here on the third page who don't appear to have read the entire thread... Disabling the feature, in whole or part, would be a very significant overhaul of the OS. It could be done, but I just don't see it happening any time soon.

I know when you have no concept of what software development is like, it's easy to think adding an option you can toggle is simple. Well it's not. A comparison some people might be more able to understand... It'd be like taking an automatic transmission car, and turning it into a 4 wheel drive car. It sounds easy enough, but once you start looking at everything that's involved... Not so much.

You just wouldn't believe the amount of effort that is involved in a seemingly simple option like this. Huge chunks of the OS, probably a minimum of 25%, would have to be completely reworked, debugged, optimized, etc. I'm probably underestimating the work load too, since I'm not familiar with the finer details of the Storm's OS.

[rchawla80]

You have no clue what you are talking about. Use Opera Mobile. If a software can make it happen that is 3rd party, I am sure BB can change the code pretty quickly.

[bigman2]

You have no clue what you are talking about. Use Opera Mobile. If a software can make it happen that is 3rd party, I am sure BB can change the code pretty quickly.

Says someone who clearly has absolutely no software development experience. I'm not saying I have a PhD in computer science, or even a BS, but after a while you start to develop an intuition about these things.

On an app by app basis it'd be easy to do, but if you want to do it system wide, you're looking at a significant reworking of big chunks of the OS, and rethinking how parts of the UI work. There's a lot more to it than just putting in a little toggle switch to some options dialog.

And Blackberry is just a brand name, it's not a company. Research In Motion, or RIM, is the company behind the Blackberry brand.

[moosc]

You have no clue what you are talking about. Use Opera Mobile. If a software can make it happen that is 3rd party, I am sure BB can change the code pretty quickly.

well guess what opera is not designed for the storm yes it works just like bolt works but its not designed for it i bet if it was designed for it would use surepress

[cray1000]

I PRAY..... PRAY PRAY PRAY.

they make a touch only keyboard.

We have all argued about this a million times, i def. know where bigman2 stands on this. (a hint, million miles from where i do)

but the simple matter is this. it would be so mega easy for them to make a touch only keyboard.

i agree making anything mroe than the keyboard touch only would require LOTS of work and substantial re-writes, but i can tell you 100% that making a touch only keyboard would take them a day at the most.

the easily added the portrait qwerty. the touch only landscape could be added just as easily. they could use the same class and just make it so the blue glow engages the key instead of the click. i bet i could take the code for keyboard if it was open source and make a touch only keyboard in 20 minutes.

yes it would be tht easy.

that being said, i think only the qwerty landscape keyboard should be touch only, i love surepress for everything else and its the concept of the phone.

i think the issue is apples multitouch patent. i think rim didnt want to make a non-multi touch keyboard but didnt want to license multitouch from apple to make a multi touch keybaord.
cause non multitouch touch keyboards suck.

i think its all patent crap.

and the poll should be who wants it, not if rim will do it. how do we know if rim will do it? and even if most people say no, that doesnt mean they dont want it, only they think rim wont do it.

[alan8385]

wow, another thread about this.... i'm keeping my opinion to myself this time because this will just end up being one of those threads where people start calling names over who's opinion is right and this thread will end up closed like others... sigh, back to the .90 threads

[bigman2]

i def. know where bigman2 stands on this. (a hint, million miles from where i do)

I don't know about that. It's not like I'd sell my Storm in protest if RIM decided to implement this feature. I'm not morally opposed to it or anything, I would just much rather the Storm developers spend their time fixing bugs and tuning performance on the existing OS and feature set before even thinking about new features.

Most of what I've said is trying to explain to people why this is unlikely to happen, though I can see how it might easily be misinterpreted as being opposed to the idea.

but the simple matter is this. it would be so mega easy for them to make a touch only keyboard.

On a purely technical level, assuming they followed strict OOP guidelines in the design of the OS, then yes, it could be implemented with relative ease for just the keyboard. But it would bring with it other issues. Take something like the Google Sync app or Gmail app, where you have to enter in your username and password, then hit some sort of a submit button. How exactly do you propose handling situations such as that? Do you really want to try and have all these special case scenarios?

Then from a UI consistency angle, this feature would be very confusing.

i agree making anything mroe than the keyboard touch only would require LOTS of work and substantial re-writes, but i can tell you 100% that making a touch only keyboard would take them a day at the most.

I think it's a bit more involved than you might think, but if they could figure out some solution to situations like the one I put forth, then it shouldn't take them too long.

There are just a lot of problems with the idea that would need to be worked out before it would even be worth starting to write any code.

[Stang68]

I think an app will be written to do this. Will it go through the App Center? Not necessarily, it might just be a regular 3rd party vendor. I would definitely download it if one comes out. Why not try it?

[moosc]

if i had to type on on a iphone clone ill buy bold or curve. the surepress is what makes it. if your not happy or do not feel like learning on how to type on the storm then dump it move on and buy a iphone. touchscreen without click just blows

[JuniorD]

Its possible, but more than likely a third party application would do this rather than RIM

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[bigman2]

I think an app will be written to do this. Will it go through the App Center? Not necessarily, it might just be a regular 3rd party vendor. I would definitely download it if one comes out. Why not try it?

I won't rule the possibility out entirely, but I find this to be rather doubtful. For it to be system wide, not just certain apps, I don't see how it could be done without access to data most likely locked away in private sections of a class. Meaning only someone with access to the full source code could do it.

[chasie]

The way i see it, we have a capacitive screen here that needs the mearest touch, so why the click? They shoud've just used physical keys if thats the case. I'd love if there was the option to turn off sure press.

[bigman2]

The way i see it, we have a capacitive screen here that needs the mearest touch, so why the click? They shoud've just used physical keys if thats the case. I'd love if there was the option to turn off sure press.

I don't understand why people like you buy something like the Storm. You HAD to know going in that you'd be required to click the screen, so if this didn't appeal to you for whatever reason, why didn't you go with some other device? And since some people have limited imaginations, no, I don't mean JUST the Jesus Phone. Believe it or not, there's more than just the Storm and Jesus Phone out there.

[BlackberryStorm98]

I don't think they would since clicking while typing is the point of the phone, but I would be interested in trying it out in a beta OS or at least having the option to disable it while typing and only have the touch

[galindo62]

Well like most things in life , options are always good. To those who say that it can't be done it can easily be done I've seen some applications that allow you to change between tap and press

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[mudpud]

I don't see SurePress going away any time soon. I think that eliminating it even just for typing, arguably the only area where I could see a need for SurePress to be done away with, would be like RIM admitting that their multimillion dollar ad campaign was full of lies. I thinl that SurePress will improve with time even for typing - both the software as well as future Storm successors' hardware.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[paulanthonyc]

RIM also won the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough award for the BlackBerry Storm's SurePress Screen. The judges comments: "RIM does it again, with a new twist to the touch screen. The SurePress screen incorporates touch with confirmation, taking interaction to a new level."
That's from last week's post regarding the Global Mobile Awards. Why would RIM develop a work-around for their award winning technology? I'd say it's a good bet surepress is here to stay. Maybe like someone else said, there might be something developed in the form of a 3rd party app, but I don't see RIM doing anything to disable it.

[chasie]

I don't understand why people like you buy something like the Storm. You HAD to know going in that you'd be required to click the screen, so if this didn't appeal to you for whatever reason, why didn't you go with some other device? And since some people have limited imaginations, no, I don't mean JUST the Jesus Phone. Believe it or not, there's more than just the Storm and Jesus Phone out there.

The reason i bought the storm is because i've had near countless reactive touchscreen phones and really wanted to check this out. I didn't want to knock it till i tried it. In fact i don't use physical keys because my fingers are to big. The storms input interface doesn't cut it for me. An option to turn off sure press would indeed be welcome! It would take less effort just lightly touch type. This topic wouldn't exist if it wasn't a bone of contention.