I was amused by a headline I saw just now on a website about ereaders and other electronic devices, called PDF Devices (link below).

This headline was as follows……

Top 5 Smartphones with a QWERTY keypad

Now isn’t that an idea?

To begin with our mobile phones got smaller and smaller, and stuffed more and more of life’s seriously important requirements into them – so we became able to tell the world were we were at any moment, or quickly check online to find out what the heck the capital of Honduras is called (it is Tegucigalpa  by the way).

One of the odder developments in all of this is that our mobile phones have started to get bigger and bigger again, as we attempt to cram more and more possibilities into a touch screen.

When all we wanted to do was to use our phones to make phone calls (now there is a revolutionary idea!!!) or to send short text messages, the screen didn’t need to be particularly big.  But now that we want to use our phones to watch Youtube videos, listen to music (and make long and complex Playlists to do that, our mobile phones are at a serious risk of returning to the house-bricks they used to be back in the Good Old Days.

A further problem is that many people (including me) are not really comfortable using virtual keyboards (the sort of keyboard that is on the screen, rather than a physical one below the screen.   So now a number of manufacturers have turned back the clock even further, and are now making what in effect are Throwback mobile phones.  I.e ones with real keyboards.

This will mean the end of all those inadvertent hitting of the “enter” key on the screen by mistake, getting all manner of odd characters appearing in the middle of words and all the other problems I associate with virtual keyboards.    But it does mean the phones are getting even bigger obviously.    So it will soon be back to needing a special back-pack to cart our phones around in.

Sadly, whilst I prefer a real keyboard, I suspect that these ones have such damn small keys that you will need to use a nail or a screw to type with, as one’s fingers will simply be too big to avoid hitting three of more keys each time.    Life is never simple is t?

Oh well, I suppose the next thing will be rotating number dials, such as we used to have on our regular phones back in the pre-mobile days of yore.    Could be fun I suppose…

Link to article   PDF Devices

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What do you feel about this idea of returning to physical keyboards on mobile phones?  Do share your thoughts on this with the rest of us here..