The era of physical keyboards is over. We're moving into natural language where they'll be even less useful than ever.
A few will mourn them. In a few years new mainstream users won't even remember them.
Rene, I appreciate everything you do for this site and the community, but you are wrong on this one.
While in the last 10 years, natural language recognition has made huge strides, to think that, even beyond touchscreens, speaking to your phone is going to replace any form of typed input is indeed tomfoolery.
Maybe I'm way off base here, but a lot of people that I know don't even like to talk on the phone. For them, it's more about posting to Twitter, FaceTube, blog posts, forums, texts, etc... Point is, they would rather input this "stuff" and not have to talk to someone - whether that someone is an actual person, or a personal digital assistant (Aka Siri, for all of you not paying attention). Our society, for the worse, is getting so anti-social, do you think people will talk to their phones, instead of real people? If that I true, sign me up for the first rocket off this planet.
You are right about one thing - the idea of a physical keyboard is dead. It is dead because of the perceived old school design of BlackBerries, Palms, and the likes. Plus, the screen real-estate you give up is a huge minus to anyone considering even thinking about a QWERTY device, coming from their full touch device.
But it's not as simple as that. The era of keyboard devices was not that long ago, a "quickie" in tech terms. Sure you give up screen size - but to some, and to some who may not/never realize it, there are advantages. Typing speed/accuracy, shortcuts, better control. Problem is, the virtual keyboard has become the norm now. And ask any Blackberry Bold, Torch, or Curve user, and they will tell you that it's about the form factor. That is why they love those devices.
The reason that the keyboard is dead is because there are no options, unless you go BB Q10. And even the new BlackBerry is betting their future on the touchscreen Z10. Why? Because that is what consumers want. Or, it's what they think they want. Too bad they won't even get to try a keyboard smartphone in the coming years.