I got to develop for and use a Pre at a previous job and it's subpar. It feels kind of cheap, the screen is too small (physically, resolution is fine), the hardware keyboard is worse than some software keyboards, and it's a little bit geeky to be mainstream. A phone shouldn't have modifier keys, imo.
That said I think webOS itself is great. Put it on some good hardware and I'd seriously consider buying one.
You're entitled to your opinion, I guess, but every phone made with a QWERTY keyboard has had modifier keys.
The Blackberry has Shift, Alt and Sym; Nokia has shift plus an blue numeric shift, and the iPhone has Shift and "123".
I'm honestly not sure how you'd even have a phone without modifier keys; there's just no good way of cramming enough buttons in the right layouts onto the phone without them. At bare minimum, people want upper and lower-case QWERTY for text entry, the telephone-style 123/456/789/0 number pad for phone numbers, plus a reasonable number of easily-accessible symbols. Even with an on-screen keyboard, I don't think you're going to do it without modifier keys or something like them, and I think you'd be hard pressed -- given the familiarity users have with modifier keys -- to do better.
If we're kvetching, though, why don't more phones allow you to enter phone numbers as alphanumeric, and do the conversion to numbers behind-the-scenes? I shouldn't have to fire up some 3rd party app in order to dial "1800 GO FEDEX" ... I should be able to type that right in like any other number and have the phone figure out that G=4, O=6, etc. The Blackberry lets you hold down Alt and type, but that's awkward and doesn't let you easily recognize a miskey. It seems trivial, yet no manufacturer seems inclined to fix it.
Well, I meant modifier keys that require holding more than one key at once. I feel that's a bit different than shift on the iPhone, but I'll concede that technically even the iPhone's shift is a modifier. My issue is then with simultaneous modifiers (for lack of a better term).
I dislike Nokia's blue-number thing and I doubt I'd like BlackBerry's alt and sym since they sound like the Pre's orange and sym. iPhone's shift and "123" are just easier to use than my n810's shift and blue shift, and easier to use than my old HTC's shift, blue shift, control, etc.
It certainly does come down to preference. No argument there.
As a geek if I find something cumbersome or awkward I can almost guarantee that most of my less geeky friends & family will feel the same way about it though. I think it's a legitimate drawback to the Pre's tiny keyboard, and I don't even have large fingers.
