I have a hard time believing that Apple will ever put their name on a clunky external keyboard for a phone. The whole idea just screams "ugly" to my sense of aesthetics. Keep an extra gadget in your pocket just so you can type on your phone? (even worse: it'd have to clip on to the phone or something for access to the display). Ick.

All it has to be is a silent driver update. Then it would be an undocumented hack for someone with Google and a Bluetooth keyboard.

An undocumented hack is going to shoot the G1 in the head and make it DOA? I wasn't saying that this couldn't be done. I was saying that Apple would never do it, because it's an aesthetic disaster.

I won't comment on whether or not it's a disaster (MobileMe, anyone), but it's really just not that useful. There is not that much to do on your phone that would require a real keyboard. If you want a real keyboard, get an Eeepc instead of an iPhone.

When the Android was first announced, I wondered which providers would support it, because sooner or later someone was going to develop VOIP capability (like the siphon project for the iPhone), and no one would be paying the provider network access charges.