Keyboard-Only Operation

The current release of MoStacks does not support keyboard-only operation; for productive use of the program, a touchscreen currently is mandatory. So, flip-closed mode on the P990i is not supported, and an attempt to run MoStacks on keyboard-only UIQ3 phones (Motorola Z8 and Z10) will probably run into various problems and is therefore not advisable.

On the one hand this is because it's an early release, and there was not yet enough time to refine the program to support keyboard-only operation properly.

On the other hand the author came to the conclusion that MoStacks is one of those programs that more or less require a touchscreen for really productive use, and he gave the issue of keyboard-only operation a rather low priority so far because of this conclusion. For the first release of MoStacks, he consciously decided to go against some UIQ guidelines in this respect.

Here is some more, almost "philosophical" reasoning about this matter, maybe interesting for people who care about UI design:

It's a very fine and delicate line that UIQ3 and its licensees try to walk here: Creating a user interface that is suitable for both touchscreen and keyboard-only use at the same time. There is the problem that if a UIQ3 program strictly follows the UI guidelines, it's less optimized for touchscreen use than it could be.

On a UIQ2 phone, with its menu bar user interface feature, it takes an average of 2 taps to issue a command, a first for opening the menu and a second for tapping the command itself. On a UIQ3 phone, for a program with many commands like MoStacks, it takes nearly 3 taps on average to do the same: One to open the main menu, another one to open the menu, and a third one to issue the command.

It's clear that a menu bar only makes sense with a touchscreen, and that you need a button to open the main menu on a keyboard-only phone. But also clear is that every time the owner of a UIQ3 phone with a touchscreen wants to issue a command he or she has to tap one more time than strictly necessary, and that extra tap is of nearly no benefit to the owner, it only benefits those other unfortunate people with keyboard-only phones.

The owner of the touchscreen phone might very well have the opinion that this is not good.

There seems to be something like a trend towards touchscreens at the moment: The touchscreen-only iPhone got a lot of attention, and Nokia is on the verge of releasing touchscreen smartphones with the S60 Touch interface. After the release of the P990i quite a while ago already SonyEricsson so far has not released another phone which has a flip and therefore a keyboard-only operation configuration.

Doesn't it seem to make less and less sense to ask those owners of touchscreen phones to make constant compromises, for the benefit of owners of keyboard-only phones?