There was a famous quote from the head of RIM when the first iPhone was released; who wants to type on a screen?
His thought process seemed logical at the time because we had all struggled with styluses and touch screens up until that time, but we were unprepared for how impressive data entry would be on a smartphone.
Fast forward four years and we are all typing on phone screens. Hardware keyboards are now viewed as merely intrusions on the screen size and takers of valuable space. They are difficult for many people to use, even when some people swear by them, and the reality is that they do not offer many benefits over the software-enhanced virtual keyboards of 2012. You can choose any keyboard style you like, switch it to landscape simply by turning your phone around and potentially type at more than 50 words per minutes.
The fact that everyone is now typing on screens still doesn’t appear to have been realised by some in the industry, but it has happened and screens will forever be sat alone on the front of phones with no hardware keyboard in site. As the benefits of voice activated data entry grow, so the screen will continue to dominate because it fits all of the advances of the future perfectly.