- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
After dying a painful death at the hand of the iPhone’s revolutionary capacitive touchscreen, the QWERTY smartphone is rising up from the graveyard this year.
Whether it’s nostalgia for a physical keyboard, frustration at iOS’s ever-worsening software keyboard, or just plain boredom with glass slabs, companies are rebooting QWERTY phones this year for some reason.
At CES 2026:
- Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a “second phone” with a QWERTY keypad
- Unihertz also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff but with a bizarre square screen on the backside.
[T]wo QWERTY phone announcements in this still very new year suggest there may be some kind of trend. Maybe after 19 years of the iPhone and touchscreens defining the mobile experience, it’s time to go back to the physical keyboard and its more tactile typing.
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I played with the Chinese Zinwa Q25 last year and it sooo felt like a Blackberry. Too bad the Q25 is plagued with issues or I would have bought one.
Almost two decades later and I still miss my Blackberry keyboard.
I’m glad you mentioned the bugs. I was slowly leaning towards it but I’ve done my fair bit of… “unpaid beta testing” for one lifetime.
I miss my BlackBerry phones. The Titan range was cool but buggy as well. If they could just do a Nothing phone with a QWERTY keyboard, I would literally buy one overnight.
I’m intrigued by the Titan 2 Elite. Never owned a Blackberry myself (or never used one as my main rather) and I do type a lot on my phone so it would be an interesting experience to try the Titan. Looks quite nice as well.
I heard that Unihertz isn’t exactly the best at supporting their phones, though, and I’m not a big fan of Mediatek either. The Communicator looks good, too, but I’d rather go with a brand that has a history of making phones, rather than cases.
I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone for about 6 or 7 months now, and man am I excited to have options for QWERTY phones again.
just plain boredom with glass slabs
This. So much this. They’re all boring, too tall, and too skinny with about as much personality as a used up dryer sheet. It’s like they’re designed solely for scrolling an endless feed of mind-numbing slop. I remember being able to actually do things on my older smartphones (RDP, SSH, editing documents/spreadsheets, etc). You can still do those things now, but you basically have to break out a bluetooth keyboard to do anything more than the most basic things and it feels like trying to look at a panorama through a keyhole.
6 🤷♂️ 7
I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone
You managed to get one? The website says they ship in 3-5 business days. I ordered in November, and this week I canceled the order because all they’ve done so far is lie to me about ship dates. Terrible, terrible experience.
I pre-ordered last June and got it toward the end of July. It seems to ship directly from the factory in Hong Kong, so you have to use the tracking link they send you until it clears customs in your country.
I did a first impressions post about it when I got it.
I would highly suggest you and anyone else wanting a keyboard that’s actually useful to check out Unexpected Keyboard. You can write code with this thing without it being a nightmare.
I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone for about 6 or 7 months now, and man am I excited to have options for QWERTY phones again.
It’s like they’re designed solely for scrolling an endless feed of mind-numbing slop.
It is because they are exactly that.
There exist palmtops and handheld computers. I have a Gemini PDA running Sailfish OS Linux and it feels very different - like a small, cat-sized laptop. No problem running ssh or vim or ledger on it, or self-written guile apps, or cross-compiled Rust CLI tools. It is a computer, not a consumption device.
Gemini PDA
Is that the one from PlanetCom? I’ve been looking at both their Gemini and Cosmo Communicator. Both were out of stock when I ended up going with the Minimal.
Yes. One good option now might be PocketPC or so. Look for “Palmtops”/“Handheld PCs”. New devices are popping up, the technology is there.
Kinda wanted to do something similar with the Pine Phone + Keyboard, but I can’t seem to find the right OS/distro for the task.
Fuck do I miss my first gen Droid. A physical slide out keyboard that was also a switch between portrait and landscape view. I hate auto gyro rotation with a passion.
These small keyboars are very bad and just really horrible when using. At least in my experience.
Yeah, small devices are always going to be awkward to type on.
still far better than touchscreens. I used a blackberry keyone for a while, and it was amazing, until I lost it on a walk in the park years ago.
I do wonder what would be more annoying though: An on-screen keyboard or a weird stubby aspect ratio that doesn’t play nice with all your other apps.
Especially when you can already get a keyboard case for a regular phone and have the best of both worlds.
QWERTY phones are fine and all, and they work well for English, but sometimes I type with this, and I’m sure as hell not gonna use a slow-ass QWERTY replacement.
Having to use something like Windows IME on a phone for Japanese is nightmare fuel
The Japanese ten-key on a touch screen is so good because you can swipe. It makes me cringe when people tap give times to get お like we used to on physical number pads.
God, I don’t miss that. Honestly, I wish there was an English ten-key equivalent.
Nothing stops you. The app is open-source, so you can add T9 swipe typing yourself.
iOS stops me pretty quick. But maybe I can explore a bit?
An unexpected obstacle! I kinda assumed that everyone in technology community would use an Android phone with a dark theme and a Linux emulator app.
I ended up using my phone as my main gaming console for a long time, so I’m reluctant to abandon my gaming library now. :(
On Android we have five year old games disappearing from Play Store, including games you’ve previously bought, because Google cannot be assed to support older Android versions.
I thought it autopredicted? At least that’s what the Chinese one does
The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2
They just had to announce it after I ordered the one with all the “bizarre” gimmicks.
Don’t feel bad or at least don’t feel alone. Such is generally my luck too.
Yeah this is something I need since my fingers don’t always register on touch screens.
omfg yes please I would actually buy a brand new phone again for that
I fucking hate entirely touchscreen stuff. using a sheets app on a touchscreen phone takes 10x as long as it should
You can find bluetooth keyboards that work just fine on a phone. The hard part is finding a good small one.
not very convenient to use in a grocery store, though
Why are you typing anything in a grocery store? Type in the kitchen when you need to add something to the list, but in the store it should be just checking off the items as you put them in the cart. Maybe you have a good reason, but it feels like you are solving the wrong problem. [insert long rant about usability and human-machine interaction]
If you really need a keyboards I agree bluetooth keyboards are chunky. I often use a 60% keyboard with my phone, but it is a lot larger than my fine despite being a small keyboard. There is no getting around the size of hands though, you can’t make a good tiny keyboard (even a 40% won’t fit in your pocket).
Why are you typing anything in a grocery store
Because my wife is serially texting me additional things and þey aren’t all at þe same store so I need to get þem into þe shopping list app?
Because someþing I saw reminded me of someþing I need to do and I need to write it down or I’ll forget?
Because I want to price compare something against what I can get it for online or from anoþer store?
Because I run into someone and need to create a new contact wiþ þeir information?
Why aren’t you typing þings at þev store?
because we have a spreadsheet for group trips and I’m checking off the items I bought
why would I want to do that on a separate list and then transfer that information to the spreadsheet afterwards, when I could just do it directly?
Hey, finally some things that aren’t exactly the same as everything else.
Do software keyboards not use the QWERTY layout? Why are we calling hardware keyboards on a phone a QWERTY phone?!
Because there still are 12-button numerical keyboard phones with T9 text input.
Removed by mod
I assume every single one is a low quality cash grab
Can I PLEASE have my early Droid pop-up keyboard back!!
Droid CEO here.
No.
I wrote mobile apps from 2005 to 2019, first on WinCE/Windows Mobile and then iOS. Briefly in 2010 I wrote a TV Guide-type app for Blackberry. Up to that point I had had nothing but contempt for Blackberry but that experience really changed my mind almost instantly. The keyboards on those devices were just so incredibly good, and even though the screens were tiny, the trackball was a fantastic pointing device that allowed pinpoint precision even on that tiny screen (cleaning the trackball was definitely disgusting but you didn’t have to do it all that often). Under the hood those devices were really impressive as well; I don’t think anybody appreciated how much memory they actually had and how fast the processors really were.
A minor weakness was that RIM chose 16-bit color for the displays early on, which gave a crappy look especially for videos (which were really too tiny to watch anyway). Halving your video RAM requirements maybe made sense in 2000 but it was a terrible decision just 18 months later (according to Moore, anyway). The major weakness, though, was the shitty development environment. The built-in controls provided by the framework were terrible, but the worst part was that any time you attempted to compile your app, each module incorporated into it had to be independently signed by RIM’s servers. On a good day, the signing process would take 10-15 minutes, while on a slow day it would take upwards of an hour or maybe never happen at all. And this was even if you’d made a one-line change to your code.
RIP RIM, but I’d like to see the keyboards coming back. Also the trackwheels.
I’d love to see the keyboards and trackballs manufactured again if for no other purpose than having them available for other projects.
There was a project a while back called Beepberry that was a little handheld Linux thing that used Blackberry keyboards. Among other reasons, the supply of the Blackberry keyboards dried up so the project died.
hackberry pi alive and well
I used to pine for this. I loved my physical keyboard on the Treo and Palm Pre. I didn’t keep it long, but I even rocked a Moto Photon Q for a bit.
Then I found swipe typing and will never go back. It is SO much faster
