In world without BlackBerry, physical keyboards on phones are making a comeback
cnet.com67 points by thunderbong a day ago
67 points by thunderbong a day ago
The only physical keyboards I liked were the Danger Sidekick II and the Nokia 9000 both horizontal QWERTY. I was never a fan of the portrait layout of the Blackberry keyboards. I would love to see the Sidekick make a come-back provided the screen was not a touch screen or there was an easy way to disable touch. I rebooted a telco mainframe from a Nokia 9000. SYREI:rank=reload,reason="CV Updated" over telnet from the phone no less. Everyone around me stopped talking on their phone for 40 minutes.
To me the keyboards on iPhone and Android feel like they are from a different planet and made for garden gnome fingers but I did not grow up with these phones.
I really liked the Motorola Droid family of slider keyboards, also horizontal. Made for a very handy, pocket ssh terminal.
The original Droid was accidentally good. A fresh droid has a smooth, flat keyboard that doesn't make for a great typing experience.
After a while, though, the keys on the keyboard swell and bulge out. Not the keyboard itself, but the keys. Might have been moisture, or oils, or heat, but it was a very noticeable effect. I owned at least 3 droid A855s, and it was a repeatable effect.
Despite the keyboard texture being an accident, to this day I consider it one of the best smartphones ever designed.
I loved the design of the original Droid. Slide out horizontal keyboard, built like a tank, easily accessible removable and replaceable battery. The specs on modern phones are light years better but design wise they're way behind what we used to have.
I still have my original Motorola Droid, I would buy one in a second if they came out with a modern version.
I never daily drove a BlackBerry, but I have no idea how some people were so proficient typing on them. I was constantly smashing multiple keys with every press.
A smaller iPhone with a case that had a flip-out-from-behind keyboard would be pretty sick.
I am trying to think of a way in which BlackBerry keyboards can be considered to have a portrait layout. The only thing that disappointed me over the history of the BlackBerry was switching from the (morally correct) frowning key rows of the 957 and 7000 series to the (obviously evil) smiling rows of the 8000 and 9000 series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry#/media/File:RIM_Bla...
I've noticed the keyboards on iOS and Android are getting taller and taller with extra buttons for things like password fill with no way to disable these features. I run a word guessing game(Redactle) and there is almost no room left for the actual game which really sucks!
The default Gboard keyboard has settings for always showing the number row, or only showing it when entering a password. There is also a setting for the "suggestion strip" under "corrections & suggestions". You can also drag to resize the keyboard itself in the Gboard menu, to scale the height.
Now, whether your users will do that to play your game is a different story, but the options exist.
Android allows custom keyboards. I like fleksy a lot but it hasn't been updated in ages with bugs creeping in.
iOS kind of does as well. But it's the bar above the keyboard that grinds my gears. Of course it was added in the sloppy liquid 'ass updates. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256177528?sortBy=rank
Have you tried Futo Keyboard? https://keyboard.futo.org/
Can it do swipe typing in multiple languages without having to manually switch? It's something that Google keyboard does really well, i have it set to 3 languages at the same time. Haven't found any other keyboard that can do that.
It's good but unfortunately doesn't support the same swipe features of fleksy. The swipe left to delete, swipe up or down for change or remember words are extremely useful.
Hope FUTO supports it in the future
I used a Blackberry Classic up until last year when my provider dropped 3G coverage. It's probably a good thing as I never got phone addiction since the browser was unusable and didn't have the apps. I did get in the habit of carrying an iPad with me though for that: but at least then you only pull it out when necessary. I might have to check out the Zinwa retrofit kits mentioned in the article: I do miss the hardware keyboard when using the Android I replaced it with.
The Pinephone with the keyboard accessory was tempting too, but the software readiness (and older hardware) didn't seem practical as a daily driver.
My Zinwa (full-device, not kit) BlackBerry actually showed up, and has been my daily for several weeks. It's fantastic, and I adore it. I love the trackpad, and use it for scrolling and cursor-placement in text daily. The keyboard is an actual, honest-to-god RIM keyboard, and it feels like it. Batteries have gotten denser, but the screen is still small, and I ditched GApps - so my battery life is measured in days.
To temper expectations though: the screen ratio doesn't always work perfectly with apps, getting Google Pay can apparently be a challenge, and the LineageOS build is imperfect (though fixes have been sent, and I expect it to get better).
Should anyone pick one up, mind the antenna resistors when using the SIM removal tool - it's possible to bump them, and they'll have to be soldered back to the board for WiFi and GPS to work correctly after.
Overall, it was cheap enough [0] that I jumped on it early, and it's gone well enough that if the Q10 revival happens, I'm buying a full device and a spare mainboard immediately.
[0] Initially there were two sets of specs, and I bought the lower-end one. Later on, to simplify production, Zinwa bumped everyone to the Pro version at no extra cost.
Did you do any typing speed tests against friends using other mobile solutions?
I've found Swype to be reasonably quick (and the learning curve isn't too steep).
However I never had a chance to race a really competent Blackberry user.
No, for the 5th time, they're not.
Seriously. I recently switched to a minimal phone which has a physical keyboard. I was pretty stoked to have one again but then the space bar broke after a few weeks. The failure rendered the entire phone immediately useless just like that.
Not even the article itself does support its own thesis: it features around four "phones" with keyboards, however two of them are no phones but cases with keyboards.
I miss the days of physical keyboards. I spend most of my time correcting mistakes on these awful screen boards.
I've been futzing about with a vague prototype of a backcountry comms device (esp32, lora radio, gps) and initially was going to pair it via bt to a phone, for the use of screen / browser / keyboard. Long story short, small e-ink displays work really well in daylight, and blackberry keyboards (and other tiny form factor ones) can be got off ali[baba|express] for relatively cheap.
It doesn't take much to throw in a LTE modem, sim card reader, a mic and a speaker -- suddenly you have a phone!
I'm don't really have a point here, and I don't know exactly where my meandering project will eventually end up -- but I really like the "own the full stack" aspect of it, and the decoupling of my little device from all the extras that have accumulated under the umbrella of "phone".
I bought a PinePhone with a keyboard case, and it's a great form factor, but the implementation is really bad, with the keys immediately binding if pressed at even the slightest angle.
A proper implementation could make phones as usable as laptops.
The delta between modern soft keyboards and phone-size physical keyboards just seems too small to make the bulk of a physical keyboard worthwhile.
If someone is really "typing long emails or editing documentation with just their phone's touch keyboard" they're probably not doing that while standing/walking, so they're probably better off getting a little stand for their phone, and a portable Bluetooth keyboard, which will be far more functional than a keyboard for thumbs.
Lot of the comments here immediately made me think of this video where a guy puts a blackberry keyboard onto a flip4. https://youtu.be/qy_9w_c2ub0?si=MvhM3SnTfcN_RCVO
The Blackberry Bold 9000 is the greatest handheld cellular device of all time. It's perfect. The Bold 2 was the last Blackberry device I owned and used as a actual phone before they started leaning into the black bar monolith. At that point the 'your holding it wrong' iPhone 4 was just better in that area.
The perfect form factor however is the Blackberry Passport which I now own as a little Cyberdeck device (managed to get a version running Android). The combination of touchscreen, keyboard swipe mouse cursor and physical keyboard is what every phone should be.
If one goes looking, Zinwa-made Passport mainboards are starting to enter testing. Based on my experience with the Q20 / Classic revival, I'd recommend one for anyone that loved their Passport
with Google's long-time push for adaptivity across candy-bar phones, foldables, tablets of varying sizes, desktops, and recently XR, I wonder how well modern apps will handle this new generation of keyboard phones :)
I almost always use voice dictation when no one's around. I think having physical keyboards is a sign of regression.
To be honest, on android there are a plenty options that work quite well within OS to reduce typos to almost 0%. Once I switched to iOS, the experience has been shockingly instable with no proper custom keyboard support. I mean, it is 2026. But just got too old to be switching OS back and forth. Physcial keyboards coming back for the save seems like one company doing one simple thing so wrong that people yearn for it. Maybe that was the play to make even more revenue. Sounds like an idea for new apple accessory. Create problem, sell the solution.
What the hell is wrong with that site? It immediately starts playing audio and there’s no apparent way to stop it.
I had a keypad phone for less than 15$ and it was really great and portable/small.
Sadly it died one day some months ago and recently I contacted some shops to find what went wrong with the phone and it looks like the battery had some issue.
But luckily, its battery is removable so I can just buy a new one. I am gonna bring it in a few days maybe (if I get the time) but should take less than 2$
The amount of features in the phones (calling+storage/music+audio+messaging ie sms) and all others make it worth it, the only thing it doesn't have is internet/app access but I really loved the phone.
For context: It's the kaechoda k100. Its keyboard is physical but it doesn't show the buttons and looks really cool irl. The buttons only show when you click on them.
I remember one of my friends literally shout one day that I had Iphone Mini and the whole class was looking at me but it actually felt really nice phone and definitely better than my dad's old shitass redmi 1 gb phone android which was so slow.
the k100 had 32mb ram iirc. its crazy how snappy it was compared to the almost two magntitude larger 1 gb android ram phone.
Dumbphones are amazing given how cheap they are.
I think that personally a cool-looking dumb phone can/should actually-be given to kids for calling/safety-concerns without giving them the beast of phones if possible in situations but obv it depends on situation.
Although one of the things I wanted with the dumb phone was a Linux handheld.
I found this website just now https://mecha.so/comet#hardware so it would be interesting to see how the idea of linux handhelds pan out.
Dumb phone + Linux handheld seems good seperation of concern personally to me given how lightweight Dumb phones are. I have had them sometimes be lost in my pocket :)
Edit: But point be said that obviously they are very restricted for messaging purposes at times but I had optimized my typing speed for it to be like 1 word per second maybe 2 so for some basic things and even talking to some of my friends sometimes it was possible.
I was the only reason people used SMS sometimes in the world where mostly its whatsapp during my time with the dumb-phone.
I never enjoyed the Blackberry-style keyboards, but I had an HTC Desire Z with a full slideout keyboard that I absolutely loved.
I had one of these (although in the states it was called the G2. I also had the G1) and fully agree, best phone I ever had. It was also the only Android I had that survived longer than 3 years. Regrettably, I have since switched to an iPhone.
I took part of an exchange program to the USA in 2009.
I vividly remember buying an HTC Dream (the HTC Desire Z's predecessor), and having to some sort of hack to make it activate with a European SIM card.
Absolutely loved the tactile feel of the keyboard, and the very satisfying mechanical click that sounded when you opened up the keyboard.
Reviews on Amazon aren’t that great
And like everything else that's making a comeback, they're like a tenth as usable as they used to be. The hardware is awful in every way. Awkward and fragile. No worth the gimmick, you'll hate it in a day. No one can even make software keyboards anymore. There is no hope.
That's true. I spent a lot of the psion comeback phone (the Gemini it was called) but it was useless. Same keyboard layout but really wobbly hardware and clunky software.
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