Believe me. Virtual keyboards are the pits. I have to put up with them on my Palm T|X. The big problem with virtual keyboards is that most of us are used to typing on the horizontal and reading against the vertical and receiving tactile feedback to acknowledge our actions and correct those near-misses. With virtual keyboards, you get no tactile feedback and (unless you use a projected keyboard) have to type on the same plane as the screen--very slow and uncomfortable.
I think one of the reasons screen sizes aren't too big is power consumption. Driving a larger screen inevitably requires more power to alter the LCD as well as more power on the graphics chip to render the higher resolution--especially since LCDs are not a persistent-display technology. This may change in future with further development of "e-ink" persistent displays (which are also being developed to be deformable--maybe not foldable but would you take rollable?).
Register
@uhuznaa
Believe me. Virtual keyboards are the pits. I have to put up with them on my Palm T|X. The big problem with virtual keyboards is that most of us are used to typing on the horizontal and reading against the vertical and receiving tactile feedback to acknowledge our actions and correct those near-misses. With virtual keyboards, you get no tactile feedback and (unless you use a projected keyboard) have to type on the same plane as the screen--very slow and uncomfortable.
I think one of the reasons screen sizes aren't too big is power consumption. Driving a larger screen inevitably requires more power to alter the LCD as well as more power on the graphics chip to render the higher resolution--especially since LCDs are not a persistent-display technology. This may change in future with further development of "e-ink" persistent displays (which are also being developed to be deformable--maybe not foldable but would you take rollable?).