Much has been made in recent times about the troubles surrounding BlackBerry maker RIM as the company sees dropping sales and a dwindling market share. The company is looking to its next operating system to reverse its fortunes, and today we can tell you that RIM has dropped the physical keyboard for the first batch of BlackBerry 10 handsets.
According to an article over at SlashGear the company has confirmed that the first BlackBerry device will not feature a physical QWERTY keyboard, and instead it will use a touchscreen only solution that features a soft keyboard like the one that was seen on the developer version back at BlackBerry World.
All is not lost though for fans of physical keyboards as RIM has stated that there will be BlackBerry 10 handsets with such a feature in the future. This is not a surprising decision by RIM though as it needs to offer devices that appeal to the wider audience, as the business users that used to be its core market are now favouring the Apple iPhone, but that’s not to say the platform doesn’t have a number of fans that have stuck with their BlackBerry’s because of the physical keyboard, and it’s easier method of typing.
The company has obviously been busy developing a new software keyboard that will have a predictive text type feature that will automatically correct typing errors. It also offers suggestions above each key so they can be selected with a simple swipe instead of having to use a list at the top of the keyboard. Getting access to numbers and punctuation also uses the swiping method that further aids with typing.
Trouble is the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones are not expected to arrive before the end of the year after a number of delays, but some have wondered if the company would actually be around that long. Do you prefer a physical keyboard?