A recent news story suggesting that RIM should make Android phones with physical keyboards reminded me of one element of my smart phone wish list that has not yet been filled. I would like a phone with a list of desirable characteristics currently available—4g, big screen, Android—plus a physical keyboard.
And not just any physical keyboard. The old Psion PDA's had physical keyboards so good I could touch type on them, using thumb and three fingers of each hand. Comparing my Psion Revo to my current Samsung smart phone, the Revo is larger, but not much larger—still small enough to fit comfortably in a shirt pocket. Reducing width and length might squeeze the keyboard too much, but given the technological progress in making miniature computers over the past fifteen years I expect it could be made thinner, and the extra height and width would permit a screen bigger than my Samsung's 4.3", which would also be nice.
And while I'm wishing ... . I'm a Verizon customer, which means that my current phone won't work in most foreign countries. That isn't a big problem—on a recent trip abroad I carried my old T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone, and bought a sim card for it in Prague for fifteen dollars or so that provided a 3g internet connection, which I mostly wanted so that I could use the gps. But still, it would be nice, when I got my ideal phone, if it was a world phone.
And speaking of gps ... . Does anyone have software that would let me download the map for some area I planned to be in, say Prague, to memory—I have lots of free memory in my current phone—so that I could use the gps without requiring an internet connection?
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