The iPhone doesn't have any physical keys. We all know this. But according to a forthcoming book from Motherboard editor Brian Merchant on the creation of the genre-defining smartphone, it would have if Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller had his way.

There's only one problem: Schiller says Merchant's telling of the story is untrue.

After an excerpt from the book The One Device: The secret history of the iPhone was published by The Verge, Schiller swiftly took to Twitter to deny the claim.

But before we get to the denial, let's take a look at the accusation.

[Schiller] wanted a keyboard with hard buttons. The BlackBerry was arguably the first hit smartphone. It had an email client and a tiny hard keyboard. After everyone else, including Fadell, started to agree that multitouch was the way forward, Schiller became the lone holdout.

He “just sat there with his sword out every time, going, ‘No, we’ve got to have a hard keyboard. No. Hard keyboard.’ And he wouldn’t listen to reason as all of us were like, ‘No, this works now, Phil.’ And he’d say, ‘You gotta have a hard keyboard!’ ”

This story was reportedly recounted to the book's author by Tony Fadell. Fadell was an Apple executive who had a hand in the original iPhone and would presumably know what was up.

Even so, Schiller is calling BS.

Not true. Don't believe everything you read... — Philip Schiller (@pschiller) June 13, 2017

To make matters even more confusing, Fadell himself is now claiming the story isn't correct. Again, for clarity, it's a story that he presumably told Merchant.

I respect @pschiller as a colleague & friend. The story about him is not true. Have asked writer to correct the record. https://t.co/87BkZGcHSi — Tony Fadell (@tfadell) June 14, 2017

Merchant, for his part, isn't backing down — a fact he makes very clear in a series of tweets defending his reporting.

I stand by the reporting—that is the story Tony Fadell told me, on the record, verbatim. — Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) June 14, 2017

I 100% stand by my work. This denial is very puzzling to me as I have a recording of our interview. — Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) June 14, 2017

I don't know why Tony would deny this now, I have audio of our interview where he told me this story verbatim. — Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) June 14, 2017

So what's the truth? Well, if Merchant does indeed have recordings of the interview as he says, we'd certainly love to hear the tape. Mashable reached out to both Merchant and Apple for comment on this story. We'll update if and when we hear back.