this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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437
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
171 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] sexy_peach@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I don't get it. On screen is fine

[–] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

.....for you. Can you concede that maybe someone else might not like it?

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.org 7 points 2 days ago

Sure I'm even happy to have hardware diversity

[–] rollin@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago

Same. This hardware keyboard is taking up potential screen real-estate.

If you want a hardware keyboard, just use a bluetooth one, you can get folding ones which fold up pretty small.

[–] Jinarched@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

It's all about tactile feedback for me.

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Same here. I get the nostalgia factor, and that tactile buttons can feel nice, but other than that I feel like it's just a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn't necessarily work well.

Instead of a quick tap, you have to actually press on each button, which slows down typing. You can't resize, recolor, or reformat your keyboard to fit your needs better, there's no split keyboard functionality for landscape mode, etc.

Plus it's just more mechanical failure points and areas that dust and gunk can get stuck in.

[–] dublet@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Never had any of my phones with keyboards have a mechanical failure. I can type blindly on a physical keyboard, not so with an OSD one. Does the tap register? Does it predict into the right word? Who knows.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I can blindly type with an on screen keyboard, it’s not that hard. What’s wrong with your phone where taps aren’t registering? And poor text prediction would be the same on physical vs on screen KB.

My old Pantrch Duo would frequently ignore physical key presses where it tactically clicked, but failed to actually bottom out enough to register. And I have that issue all the time with mechanical keyboards where the tactile bump happens before the key actually gets registered. Not an issue for typing, but for gaming I do it often.

[–] dublet@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I can blindly type with an on screen keyboard, it’s not that hard

You can type a full actual sentence on an OSD keyboard including punctuation without looking at it?

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 days ago

Yeah. It’s not that hard.

I just did with that.

Also what are you typing blindly where punctuation actually matters?

[–] Melonpoly@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Plus it's just more mechanical failure points and areas that dust and gunk can get stuck in.

Good thing this has been solved for years now. It's not like keyboards are a new invention.