Keys, keys, everywhere and not the one i want to press...

This post is about the physical keyboard of the N900. When I was looking for a phone as I previously posted, it had to have a physical keyboard. The keyboard was one of the things that sold me on the N900.

Perhaps I should start by saying that it is better than no keyboard! I don't have to waste screen space with a virtual keyboard. I honestly couldn't imagine doing this blog post with my N900 as I am doing if all I had was a virtual keyboard. But, that said, I am very disappointed in this keyboard's layout.

Where does it fall short for me...

• Shift, FN, and Ctrl keys: these exist only on the left side of the keyboard. I constantly find it very difficult to get some combinations because I want to hit a shift/fn key on the right side and the second key on the left. This has adverse effects when doing acronyms. The following requires 10 key presses OR an uncomfortable reach with your right thumb while holding the shift/FN keys: - FAT -
• Numbers: the numbers are arranged along the top row just as one would have on a qwerty keyboard; however, they require you to press the FN key to use. Locking the function key helps with that, but it is still inconvienent to do that. Numbers should have been placed in a keypad configuration like on Treo series of phones. At least the virtual keyboard got it right.
• Special Key Combos: virtually impossible to do comfortably with the keypad while holding the phone. Try SHIFT+CTRL+P for doing a screen capture.
• Offset Space Bar: Honestly, one does get used to it for the most part. My main issue is that it feels unnatural for the N & M keys more than anything else. I would still rather have the space bar in the middle... Or at least between the B & N keys.
• TAB: Where is the tab function? I would so love a useable key combo to get a tab. Presently, i have only found the FN + Sym key sequemce to bring up a symbol page which happens to contain a tab key on it.

SOLUTIONS AND WORK AROUNDS:

Well, i dont kmow (common typo of mine because the N key is too far to the left) what are any work arounds for this. I have noticed that there are no FN settings for the arrow keys. Perhaps a keyboard mapper that enables modification of what the keys do... Say add functionality to map the arrow keys to primary functions of TAB, SHIFT, FUNCTION and CTRL with the left function key activating the arrow key functionality. I really havent explored this option yet, but it could be quite possible through SCIM or some other keyboard mapper.

Anyone have any thoughts or experiences with this?

Sadly, i dont know of any real option for the poor keyboard layout and lack of numeric keypad option that would really be suitable given the markings on the key face.

RELATED:

Predictive text. Not sure what the magic is here, but more often than not, it doesn't really seam to give me the word i really want. I would like to see some simple things work like auto capitalisation of 'i' when entered by itself and not followed by a period.

Readers, how have you been able to maximize it?

Some observations of mine:

• Pressing right arrow moves to end of suggested word and adds a space.
• Adding a period (or other punctuation) after selecting a suggestion will insert the punctuation to left of the space.
• Pressing backspace/left arrow will remove the suggested portion of the word.
• Pressing down arrow will move to next field and ignore the rest of the suggestion.
• When using with the virtual keyboard (VKB), there are now arrows to do the previous function and accept the suggestion. To accept the suggestion, press (click) on the highlighted word. Well, that is all for this post. As always, i hope it is helpful to someone.

BTW: I have written this on my N900 using the MaStory application.