this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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445
QWERTY Phones Are Really Trying to Make a Comeback This Year (gizmodo.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by IcedRaktajino@startrek.website to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I doubt the wpm of the average physical keyboard user could ever be lower on average compared to the wpm of users of touchscreen keyboards.

That is to say, if we could somehow make a phone keyboard that was practical to use, but not so large that it defeats the portability of the device, imo, that would be the best.

[–] cybernihongo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 hour ago

I think you might be underestimating how some people type really slowly when given a full sized QWERTY keyboard, numpad and all.

Then again the one limiting factor of phone keyboards (touch or physical) is that they're designed for two thumbs, instead of just whatever fingers happen to be closer to the button you want. Though I'll admit I do miss when Nokia, BlackBerry, etc, came up with unique solutions for how to get a small physical keyboard attached to a phone.