[makkonen]

I agree with you -- I'd rather have a keyboard and the extra heft than vice versa. And typing URLs and random characters with a soft keyboard is pretty awful, no matter how clever the keyboard is. But I haven't had a soft keyboard I've truly ENJOYED using since the sidekick. Treo (600/650) -- too small. Apache -- rotation too slow. Raphael -- rotation and entry too slow. All that said, when I had a Vogue, the lack of keyboard drove me crazy. It wasn't until I had the TP with the choice of agonizing hard keyboard or flawed soft keyboard that I started to get used to it.

And now with Android I'm getting pushed back in the other direction. With the touchscreen weirdness making the soft keyboards unusable until recently (and still less than perfect), and the much faster hard keyboard response, I find myself flipping the phone open more in a couple months than I did in a year with WinMo.

Anyway, I think the Evo is a phone for enthusiasts -- the front-camera, the snapdragon proc, the WiMax hotspot all put it at the top of the high end, more a pocket computer than a phone. It's just that the industry is, as you said, pushing away from hard keyboards; not necessarily for penurious reasons, but just because a sleeker, sexier phone will sell to more people. I'll put up with no keyboard, for all the other stuff. My girlfriend won't put up with a brick in her pocket.

I'm just rambling here. I'd love something like the Evo but with a decadent, expansive hard keyboard. Or the TP2 form factor with the Evo internals. Or the Evo internals (or a WiMax HD2) with Windows Mobile as the OS (so I could activate it on my SERO account and then dual boot). But given the realities, the Evo looks like the best option around.