In a sordid twist, HTC has announced that they will be going away from hardware keyboards. Very disturbing news indeed as that was the reason I picked the HTC EVO Shift 4G for my Sprint phone.
I personally feel that HTC is making a mistake, as hardware keyboards is how they made their name to begin with.
Source: http://www.phonenews.com/htc-shifting-focus-away-from-hardware-keyboards-in-device-designs-20191/