In design, they paid a lot of attention to making common actions available with your free thumb so you could navigate most apps with one hand. App-switching, context menus, device operations were all swipe operations.

Having a hardware keyboard made it a bit chunky but didn't feel bad in your pocket because it was so smooth. Also the hardware keyboard provided a true tactile feel so you could even type out some messages without looking at your screen nearly as much as you need to with on-screen keyboards.