No, not compromise: the opposite: NO compromise: you want a keyboard AND a large screen? NO COMPROMISE, you get both. Yes, it would be thicker / possibly heavier, but that's a compromise I'd GLADLY, EAGERLY make.
I accept that there would be a slightly higher, not significantly higher, cost. One might think that there would be significant additional costs... but remember: "slider" technology is 20 years old, the details have been worked out and my 9800 and 9810(s) have never EVER failed in the slider mechanism: one had the trackpad die, another had the screen crack when dropped, the other is PERFECT, but the slider was rock solid.
I missed my bus stop today because of this attitude: on a busy bus route, I assumed the bus would stop at the next stop to pick up passengers, and the bus was jam packed and I couldn't reach the "request stop" wire so I didn't bother to pull it, so I made my way to the back door and the bus just sped by my stop. Even BlackBerry advocates who must acknowledge by now that "full slab" isn't the key issue with BB10 device designs, nor is "slap a keyboard on it". It's something else... but because all of these assumptions about costs and reliability that are simply unsubstantiated, people say "No, let's not do a slider".
I think there's a "a slider would be to costly and a customer service nightmare, so let's not bother" attitude that I for one would like to see simply disappear... or I would love an insider at BlackBerry to give us all a profile of how the Torch sold and how much post-sale service was required. I bet the sales were higher and the service was lower than most people think.
Anyone actually work in smartphone design / manufacturing on CrackBerry that can provide data beyond what I could scrape off iSuppli.com?
Perfectly reasonable people on CrackBerry seem very willing (for reasons I don't understand) to just rule out a slider as too costly to develop and produce, and just take it for granted that the after-sale support would be too much of a drain on resources and therefore simply there could not be a business case for a slider device. It's all conjecture: claims that can not be borne out by even rudimentary research such as I did here:
http://forums.crackberry.com/rumored...ml#post9705183
That thread is chock-full of slider goodness, including this mock up by the OP:
http://forums.crackberry.com/attachm...ider-front.jpg
And I would pay any retail price for that device (that is in line with the fair-market cost of components and reasonable markup).
So why isn't there ALREADY a BB10 slider? Especially when the "Milan" was the FIRST BB10 device we heard about but then it was scuttled? I think it was a strategic decision, and a terrible one: remember it was with reluctance that they acquiesced and produced the Q10... the conventional wisdom was they had to compete with apple / android in the 'full touchscreen slab' space because "that's what people want". Turns out what they want are mostly devices running Android manufactured by Samsung, and iPhones. Their attitudes to form-factor was simply an error in judgement, a mischaracterization of where BlackBerry 10 would fit into the market.
Now, we know the truth: BB10 is a niche-market device, and "full slab" form factor ISN'T where it's at, not for BlackBerry (not for HTC or LG or Nokia either, for that matter).