#922 2007 · Apple (Steve Jobs) · Consumer electronics
Apple deleted the smartphone's keyboard and buttons and let software be the interface
the problem
Smartphones like the BlackBerry and Palm Treo bolted a fixed physical keyboard onto every device, no matter what app ran
background
By 2006, the smartphone market's leaders — the BlackBerry, Palm Treo and Windows Mobile devices — all shared the same physical layout: a hardware keyboard occupying a third or more of the device's face, plus dedicated buttons and often a stylus, all fixed in place no matter which application was running. That fixed hardware was treated as a mark of seriousness for a business device, but it meant every phone carried the weight, cost and screen space of an input method most apps didn't actually need at any given moment.
Apple's team, developing the iPhone in secret, could have followed the category's own logic and added a slide-out keyboard alongside a touchscreen, as many rivals did. Instead Steve Jobs presented the decision as a binary at the iPhone's January 2007 unveiling, mocking existing phones for keyboards 'there whether you need them or not' and stylus-based input, and committed the device to touchscreen input and a single physical button.
what everyone would do
The established smartphone playbook was to add a physical keyboard alongside a screen, since a hardware keyboard was the accepted mark of a serious business device that could actually get typing done.
what they saw
Jobs saw a fixed keyboard bet every app needed the same input method — already wrong, since a dialer, calendar and browser each want different controls. Removing it let the interface become a different tool per task.
the move
The original iPhone shipped with no physical keyboard, no stylus and only one button on its face, replacing all of it with a software keyboard and on-screen controls that changed shape and layout depending on which application was running, aided by then-new multitouch gestures like pinch-to-zoom.
why it works
Deleting physical keys and buttons freed the entire face of the device for a screen that could redraw its controls per application — a calculator's number pad, a browser's address bar, a keyboard only when text entry was actually needed. That flexibility was the direct payoff of removing hardware that could only ever do one thing.
the payoff
The iPhone sold out its first weekend on sale in June 2007 and remade the industry's default interface around touchscreens within years.
where it breaks
It depends on the underlying touch technology and software being responsive enough to replace the removed hardware convincingly — a touchscreen keyboard on laggy or inaccurate hardware is simply worse than the physical keys it replaced, which is why many earlier touchscreen phones failed with the same idea. It also requires users willing to accept a learning curve rather than defecting to familiar hardware.
what came after
Within several years nearly every phone manufacturer, including BlackBerry itself, abandoned physical keyboards for touchscreens, making software-defined input the default interface for a device category that had spent a decade assuming fixed hardware.
references
- [1]iPhone (2007) review: A game-changer years in the makingMacworld, 2007macworld.com