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.
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
Texting on my old stratosphere was so much better than the modern keyboards. I wouldn’t mind an updated version.
While we’re at it, can I have back the mini trrackball with integrated notification LED from my HTC Hero?
And my removable battery, expandable storage, and IR blaster please.
It’s not exactly the same but the Clicks phone keyboard is touch sensitive so you can swipe on the keyboard, and the button on the side has a notification LED
Yes. This. I second this.
Dvorak phone when? Preferably with compose key in place of caps lock, but it’s not vital.
And for fucks sake, give us an ISO option. I’m not claiming one is superior over the other, but most of the world have used ISO their entire lives and absolutely detestable ANSI.
I don’t think they are - if they were we’d be seeing models from the likes of Samsung or Huawei.
Its good clickbait for gizmodo though.
It looks like we’re getting decent options now? Like the Clicks one is designed in cooperation with a former Blackberry designer. From what I see on Reddit, BB Key2 from 2018 was the last good option in this space, so I understand the excitement.
I’d buy one 100%. I hate touch screen keyboards. Some are better than others but take me back to the blackberry days.
Good, writing with a touch screen is absolutely horrendous.
All this bullshit about phones with folding screens nowadays when what I really want is a phone with a folding mechanical 104-key :P
Let it fold: one half holds the landscape screen, and across the lengthwise hinge is space for a wonderful keyboard. Let it be a phone-phone when it’s clammed up and you still have space for Qi and a 3.5mm. BLISS
Would also erase the need for the atrocious spellcheck. Few minutes ago I wanted to write „random“ it got changed to „ransom“ and when I changed it again I wrote “randon“ by accident.
Writing is okish, editing however is horrendous.
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.
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’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.
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.
6 🤷♂️ 7
I’m tempted to give it a go but I exclusively type using swipe gestures on my phone so I’m not sure that’s a learning curve I want to commit to.
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.
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.
Having to use something like Windows IME on a phone for Japanese is nightmare fuel
There were some breakthroughs in postmarketOS with the BlackBerry KEY2 recently. I really hope a phone with the Blackberry Classic form factor gets good mobile linux support in the next few years (bonus points if it’s a linux-first device!) A physical keyboard (in that form factor) is one of the few things that could convince me to ditch the Librem 5.
I grew up on the tail end of Blackberry’s dominance. Most of the people in my school had a Blackberry, I’ve always envied those keyboards, and I feel really nostalgic about them.
There’s something special about that form factor that appeals to me more than the N900 or clamshell designs. I think it’s that they’re happy to compromise the screen for a great keyboard, rather than the other way round.
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 miss my old Motorola Droid 2. I don’t need a thinner phone, give me that slider form factor.
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.
It’s an ad
I was a huge ‘tactical keyboard on phone’ kinda guy. Then I got acclimated to Swype. I don’t think I could ever go back but think choice is good.
