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Mossberg Is Mixed On The iPhone And Its Onscreen Keypad

Earlier this week, technology columnist Walter Mossberg pulled out his iPhone at The Chronicle of Higher Education's President's Forum. The iPhone even stole the show at a conference of academic administrators. But, even more important, Mossberg gave a possible preview of his upcoming review.

Here is a look at Mossberg's thoughts on the iPhone:

"I don't know whether I'll give it a good review or not," he said, noting that he will use the phone for the next couple of weeks before writing his review. "I can already see some things I don't like about it. I see some other things that I do like a lot about it."

He said a crucial question was whether the iPhone's touch-screen keypad is an adequate replacement for the keyboards on BlackBerries and other advanced cell phones.

"They are claiming that through clever software they have figured out a way for this to be actually far more accurate and efficient than you think it will be, and I'm testing that proposition," he said. "And I can tell you that in the first hour it works a little better than I thought, but I'm still not sure it works as well as a regular keyboard -- and the first hour is not a very fair test, so I'm going to keep going at it."

Mossberg's question centers around the iPhone's on-screen keypad. Like my colleague Alex Wolfe, Mossberg seems uncertain if the onscreen keypad is a great replacement for the physical QWERTY keyboard on most smartphones like the BlackBerry.

What this question really reveals is our collective uncertainty about this device. Is the iPhone primarily a messaging device or a media center?

Smartphones are supposed be a laptop in a small box. In reality, most smartphones are far, far from being a true laptop replacement. Most smartphones are either good as messaging devices, like the BlackBerry, or as multimedia centers. To be honest, though, there are no real success stories on the multimedia side of smartphones to date. Of course, the iPhone promises to change this by making smartphones viable mulitmedia centers. But what no one wants to consider is that successful multimedia smartphones, including the iPhone, may stink as messaging devices.

And based on the Jobsnote at WWDC this week, it sure looks like Apple wants the iPhone to be a success as both a messaging device and a multimedia center in your pocket. But can any device do both things well? I mean, even laptops these days try to focus on being either media/gaming boxes or machines for road warriors. Why should smartphones be any different?

What do you think? Will the iPhone cut it as a messaging device and a mobile media center?

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