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Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back
(spectrum.ieee.org)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Having had one of the old Windows phones with a keyboard dumped on me at an old workplace, can confirm it's completely possible for a phone to have a keyboard and be a complete piece of shit.
A good phone with a good keyboard may have some use cases. If you do a lot of writing but not any more computing power or screen space than a phone has, plus you want to be doing that on the move, then yeah. For me, can shitpost on forums using my phone in my spare time, and dealing with on-call work issues - having multiple tabs of Jira and Slack open, for instance - just isn't really practical on a small screen.
If your job is very email-centric, then yeah, sure. Blackberry were very good for just having the stuff you need - email, vpn, 'corporate' office documents - in a form that worked.
That is why I mentioned blackberry specifically, phones can have a keyboard and it not be better for sure, I have also used some crap ones. Blackberry however made amazing keyboards on their devices and the best phone I have owned was a keytwo which I used up until around 2 years ago when it died a death.
I dont see why you have to have some email centric job or need a specific "use case" to want a better, more tactile typing experience. I work running industrial machines, I dont touch a computer or send any emails as part of my work but that doesnt mean that I dont want a phone with a decent keyboard. I still have to type messages on my phone, like I am doing right now and for me personally I think touchscreen is by far the inferior option when put next to a half decent keyboard. I dont need to be sending emails or working on documents or programming or what ever else to appreciate a better typing experience.
I type every day on this shitty touch screen without those additional work needs or whatever.
I realise that not everyone wants this and that is fine but the suggestion that because I dont work on my phone in that was so therefore dont need a physical keyboard is ludacris. I am in a niché of people who want this, I know that but that doesnt make my opinion any less valid in terms of my desire just to have the option of not typing on these hateful touch screens :)