By Todd Ogasawara on August 20, 2009 4:40 AM

T-Mobile Touch Pro2 Missing a Few Key Keyboard Keys

QWERTY Keyboards: HTC Touch Pro2 (top) – HTC TyTn (bottom)

TyTn physical soft keys

TyTn Windows, OK, and Tab keys

I’ve been waiting for the HTC Touch Pro2 to appear as a subsidized (read: somewhat affordable) product in the U.S. for months now. The main reason for this desire was to get a smartphone with a decent physical QWERTY keyboard. You can see the Touch Pro2 keyboard comapred to one of my all-time favorite HTC TyTn keyboard in the first photo above. The Touch Pro2 keyboard is reasonably good though it would have been better (for me) if the inter-key space was reduced to zero as in with the TyTn keyboard.

My main problem with the Touch Pro2 keyboard is five missing important keys.

1 & 2. The left and right soft keys seen in the TyTn and other Windows Mobile smartphone keyboard disappeared with the Touch Pro2. I have to completely lift my hand off of the QWERTY keyboard to touch buttons on the screen.

3. The Windows button is used to bring up Windows Mobile’s Start Menu which shows a list of fixed icon short cuts in a vertical menu and a short list of recently used application icons in a horizontal menu. This is incredibly handy to quickly navigate from one app to another. The Touch Pro2 has a Home button near the screen. But, it does not serve the same function (as least with HTC’s Touch Flo running).

4. The OK button does just one thing: Simulate pressing OK on the screen. This happens a lot and was simple to perform when using the QWERTY keyboard. Without it, you have to move your hand completely off of the QWERTY keyboard to tap OK on the screen. The Return key behaves inconsistently as an alternative to the OK button.

5. The Tab key is extremely useful for moving from one field to another in a web form. Username and password text boxes are a simple but important example. One of the best things about having a real QWERTY keyboard is the ease it provides in filling out text forms on a smartphone. The down arrow key sometimes moves from one field to another. But, its behavior when a combination of text boxes and links are present is inconsistent (or just wrong).

When I use a Windows Mobile smartphone with its QWERTY keyboard extended, I expect to be able to do everything from that keyboard and not need to lift either hand to tap something on the touch screen. This was true for devices with keyboards that included the five missing keys described above. HTC removal of these keys from the Touch Pro2′s keyboard design has really reduce productivity potential on it for me.