As crappy as they were, all the windows phones I owned before the iPhone came along were using soft keyboards. Wasn't like something "new". Albeit, iPhone keybo

As crappy as they were, all the windows phones I owned before the iPhone came along were using soft keyboards. Wasn't like something "new". Albeit, iPhone keyboard was a definite advance in terms of usability which it's primary stylus being your finger. The crappy stylus driven keyboard is probably what made Blackberry so popular and the iPhone was a natural evolution of people wanting to just use their hands with such a device without compromising screen real estate.