Windows Phone Thoughts: 'HTC Can't Disguise Windows Mobile Flaws' -Katherine Boehret

"New iPhone competitors continue to crop up, though most are mobile devices from companies that simply slap on a touch screen in hopes of fooling consumers. The real key to the iPhone's success is its software, and finally, signs indicate that other companies are starting to pay more attention to making good software to go along with their hardware. One welcome sign is an effort by companies trying to improve Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows Mobile operating system, which has a reputation for confusing navigation and hasn't had a major update recently."

This is an interesting article, not because it's the Walt Mossberg crew's typical skewering of anything Microsoft and the typical slavish praising of anything Apple, but because it highlights a problem that seems to have Boehret thinking that this device is less capable than it really is. The big issue was the keyboard: Boehret describes the keyboard as "...small and cramped. Using just your fingertips was next to impossible." She's obviously talking about the standard Windows Mobile keyboard, the one designed for stylus use, not the HTC keyboard, the one designed for finger-tip use. The HTC keyboard looks very much like the iPhone keyboard, and while it's not quite as big due to the screen size differences between the iPhone and the HTC Diamond (3.5 inches vs. 2.8 inches) it's still quite finger friendly.

So the question is, should Microsoft continue (presumably) forcing HTC to include the stylus-based keyboard if it means that people who don't know any better (which includes Boehret) think that's the only keyboard there is to use? The ability to toggle between various input methods isn't terribly discoverable - everyone reading this site knows how to do it, but a user who's never picked up a Windows Mobile Professional smartphone might think that whatever keyboard pops up is the only one they can use. What do you think - would the usability of the HTC Touch Diamond go up or down if, by default, there was only one input method? And yes, I'm suggesting turfing not only the tiny stylus-based keyboard, but also the block recognizer, the letter recognizer, and even Transcriber. The stylus on the HTC Touch Diamond is so small I find Transcriber almost impossible to use. If you own an HTC Touch Diamond, do you use one input more than another? And do you swap between input methods?