Smartphone users just don't know what they want. One of the biggest, loudest complaints about all-touchscreen phones like the iPhone is its lack of a hardware keyboard, and now a survey shows Pre users most want a soft keyboard.
The survey shows that users like the hardware keyboard but don't like sliding it out every time they want to type something. Certain Android devices have both soft and hardware keyboards, but they're very much in the minority. It's an interesting problem for Palm, whose rumored next WebOS device, the Eos, features a fixed hardware keyboard but a much smaller screen. Still, Palm wouldn't have too difficult a time updating the Pre's firmware with a soft keyboard—after all, Android did it already.
