Gizmodo this weekend linked to a survey of Palm Pre users that shows they want a feature of the iPhone that perhaps drove many of them away from the iPhone:

Smartphone users just don’t know what they want. One of the biggest, loudest complaints about all-touchscreen phones like the iPhone is its lack of a hardware keyboard, and now a survey shows Pre users most want a soft keyboard.

The lack The beauty of not having a hardware keyboard on the iPhone is that it’s there when you need it and gone when you don’t without you needing to physically alter the device to get the keyboard as the OS on the iPhone hides and reveals the keyboard for you.   No pesky sliding that you may or may not be able to do with one hand, no worries about switching the language on your device should you need to and not having the proper keyboard to match, no reason to manufacture separate devices with keyboards for specific languages, etc.

(Nod: Just Another iPhone Blog)