I wonder if there’s a technical reason making an on-screen keyboard difficult? For sure, typing on my Kindle is pretty slow and imprecise, and wouldn’t come close to acceptable on a phone.

Also, there are phone-shaped e-readers if that’s your bent; check out the Boox Palma.

Typing on the Palma's screen sucks due to the input delay. At least if you have fat fingers like me and prone to making typos on touchscreen devices.

Typing on the Palma with a BT keyboard, however, is an absolute joy.

my guess - e ink refresh rates / ghosting suck and it would be hellish hard to get an on screen keyboard with an e ink display to get anywhere the typing speed a modern touchscreen can deliver.

The article actually mentions that:

"I really appreciate them including the keyboard here, as the display looks great but is definitely not all that responsive, so typing would be a lot more frustrating without this."

I don't know how much the fast refresh rate mode helps in that regard.

I guess it aims at the blackberry passport types. There's a lot of people still missing that one

We exist and have been unhappy with our iPhones ever since our BlackBerries died. Seriously. This thing makes me feel so clumsy.

Yeah I think I would have liked one too. It's just that when the passport came out, blackberry OS was already on its way out so I didn't buy it

You missed out! The Passport was an excellent phone. Great hardware and the OS was nice. And the KeyOne (android) was probably my favourite phone ever.

Had you used any BlackBerry phones before it? In my opinion the Passport was considerably better than other BlackBerry phones from the couple of years before it, but it was so much worse than the older BlackBerries were (at least in the context of what was available at the time) so much better that people who had used BBs for years found the Passport frustratingly bad in comparison.

Yep, I had several Blackberrys and hated the Passport's weird, ramrod-straight 3 rows of keys. Much less ergonomic to type on than the slightly curved 4-row setup on the Bold 9000 (2008), which they never reproduced on future models.

Hi there, I had several BlackBerry phones, including a Passport SE.

For productivity apps, nothing compared with the Bold 9900. So snappy and minimalistic. The memos, calendar, messaging and the like were great.

As far as BB10 devices go, the Passport had the screen real estate, but the Q10 was way more pocketable. So I found the Passport awkward to deal with when on the move. I still have all of them. Who knows what to do with functional old tech?

Not seriously no. I had an HTC Desire Z before that (exceptional hardware design with a snap open landscape keyboard).

The Passport keyboard had an ortholinear shape. Together with the overall form factor, I can see how people may have found it a bit form over function. But I loved it.

Hmm I had the HTC Touch Pro 2 and it was the worst phone I ever had in my life. It was given me by work, I didn't pick it. It ran a customised version of Windows CE with a lot of super fake glossy overlays that slowed it down to an absolute crawl, and the keyboard was so tough and heavy that it was a nightmare to use. It was really a piece of shit. It also had a really horrible resistive touch screen (one of those with a plastic layer over it)

Maybe they made good stuff too but that put me off HTC forever.

Many people swear by the Passport, but the BB Classic in easily topped it my opinion. The best phone keyboard ever made and the phone itself could serve as a blunt weapon if it came to it.

You can argue many of these points either way. But, objectively, the Passport had a robust stainless steel frame, which was exposed at the edges.

It amazes me (and that's on the account of me getting older) how people not immediately associate it with the a BB phone. I remember complaining at how BlackBerry 10 took away lots of usability tricks and keyboard shortcuts the classic BlackBerry OS had, and also how laughable it was that the original iPhone didn't even support copying and pasting on release. Oh how things have changed.

Huge selling point for me. I prefer a manual keyboard.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising manual keyboards in general. Just specifically on a device for which your primary purpose will be reading (which is what the OP's article is about). If I'm going to be mainly reading on the device then I want as big a screen as possible.

I get the sense that they're not using it only as a reader, but as a general smartphone replacement, where for the most part the reduced capability set rhymes with better living.

Reading can also include commenting, such as on The Verge article that's pictured, or on this very site.

I've got a Kindle Keyboard, and it's nice because I can input words at reasonable speed and don't need to touch the screen and get it fingerprinty. Kindles with the five-way button were a pain to input words into, but the page turn buttons were nice.