So no one dare to release a qwerty slider until Apple revive the hardware keyboard? Is that it...

Probably...
yup...

No one to blame here but the masses....

And the sheep go "Baaa..."

So... let me get this straight. The masses strayed away from the hardware keyboard and they're to blame?

I'm sorry. But I got beef with the folks that made horrible devices with hardware keyboards that would break as soon as you typed out your fifth sentence (exaggeration)

A lot of the non-Nokia devices sucked whereas Nokia hit it out the park with the N810 (not a mass marketed or majorly purchased item) and the N900 (again, not a mass marketed or majorly purchased item).

The masses spoke. They just didn't agree with us. The majority of the devices with a hardware keyboard plain sucked though.

The marketplace demonstrates the ultimate end of democracy:

Tyranny by the majority

I was thinking about the keyboard issue in this regard,
those of us who loathe crapacitive screen keyboards
are outnumbered by about a million to one
by those who do not type so much as they 'finger' their phones.
They are barely
litret enuf 2 spel there nemes crctly,
much less compose legitimate sentences,

The fact that it is just good business to pursue the seething masses
rather than people who give a flying frak about capabilities
means we will -always- be outside the marketplace.

I have also considered it somewhat of an intelligence indicator
that someone I met had an old blackberry or other keyboard device.

Too bad we are such a difficult market segment.
sigh

Bingo.......

Always nice with Bingo while waiting for the tech. Tech advancements can swing the options faster than people can spell nano.

So just think and computer follows ...so why not new improved keyboards for the masses.

I really blame all the people who dare to use other languages than english on the disappearance of the HWKBD.

The thing is; it is just damn expensive to create and maintain physical keyboard layouts for more than one language. With touchscreen the physical keymat disappeared into virtual reality and will never come back up from those depths...

Any time there is a discrepancy between usability and cost the same thing happens, over and over again; cost reduction wins hands down.
That's called consumer choice and unfortunately you cannot revert it.

I expect phones with HWKBD to be far and few between but I think that TOHKB is still a good concept. Although the one with the magnets for the Jolla phone did not work out that well for me, if a company made a TOH slider mechanism you that you could attach a HWKBD or game control that would be good. Unfortunately, another bad trend is that companies are making phones so that you can't replace battery. As a result, back is not removable.

To be fair, a simple QWERTY keyboard that allows for three levels can be used by half of the world population. Maybe not all keys will be in the usual location as they are on desktop keyboards, but you'll have to make compromises anyway to fit the available space. Language-specific keymats for any language that uses or can use the Latin alphabet are not much more than a fashion statement.

You know as much as I miss physical keyboards, I find myself typing much faster on an on-screen keyboard than a physical keyboard simply because of "swiping". However, I do agree it does get a bit hard when lets say I want to SSH into a box and run various commands for example. Just my two cents.