The first thing that made me attracted to this HTC Desire Z was its keyboard. I was never a fan of touch screen. The reason was because the screen of a mobile phone is very small and I often end up clicking the wrong link or typing a phrase full of spelling errors.

Even with a 7 inches screen of a Samsung Galaxy Tab, I still make mistakes while typing.

I feel that being not savvy with touch screen typing makes me an outdated person during the iPhone era. Luckily, HTC is aware that people like me still exist.

Typing using the HTC Desire Z’s keyboard is a breeze. I have the same enjoyable feeling that I had when I used a blackberry Bold and Nokia E71. In fact, such layout which is implemented for HTC Desire Z is suitable even for big fingers.

(I typed all the above using my HTC Desire Z’s keyboard)

Using the virtual keyboard @ touchscreen is not bad too. The alphabet keys are big enough for my thumb. Furthermore, there is a word suggestion feature to make things further easy. If I type on the vertical keyboard, I still manage to type without much error but the keys are extremely small and and using the vertical keyboard will be my last resort.

Horizontal keyboard experience is much better and I don’t mind using it when necessary. There is auto correction feature too which is very much helpful.

Unfortunately, Swype was not available for this model. Has HTC decided not to have Swype because of the physical keyboard?

I will still give priority to the physical keyboard for my typing needs although the virtual keyboard @ touch screen fares good for the HTC Desire Z. I still don’t like the virtual keyboard as the keyboard takes up half of the screen space while you are typing something..

Conclusion : physical keyboard wins.

P/S – the 1st part of this article was typed using the physical keyboard and the following part was typed using the virtual keyboard