QWERTY Smartphones

[ajm]

I really despise touchscreen phones, in my opinion they're an incredibly stupid idea for several reasons; even the best of them are truly horrible to use unless you've the fingers of a five year old.

I have a Blackberry Pearl 3G which as far as I can tell is the ONLY smartphone on the market that has a proper numeric keypad, and really it's been very good indeed (had it coming up two years now, was quite recently released when I got it).

Functions fantastically well as a phone, handles email nicely, has all the smartphone features I need, still very decent battery life two years on.

I find the qwerty keyboards better than touchscreens, but still tiresome to use - good predictive text on a numeric keypad is far more reliable for me and easily fast enough.

I'm not a fan of other Blackberry phones in general (though thankfully that awful scroll ball is now history) and would much prefer an Android based phone but it seems that everybody is sold on the currently fashionable touch screen

 

[rosstheboss]

AJM have you tried a recent touchscreen smartphone? The reason I ask is they have improved dramatically in the last 2/3 years, I fired up my old HTC Magic the other day and was surprised how much worse it felt than my Desire HD, even though I remember it being great at the time! I also remember my boss' Samsung Tocco which was awful and put me off touchscreens for a while too - you could hang up on people accidentally with your ear for example!

 

[Barneyballbags]

There is a new blackberry OS on its way in the summer that is looking like it might kick many other smartphones in the water. Try www.crackberry.com

Yeah, I seem to remember that being said about OS6.... and OS7... BlackBerry seriously need to up their game to even come close to Android, WP7 and iOS. It'll be interesting to see what they do.

 

[ajm]

AJM have you tried a recent touchscreen smartphone?

Yeah, as part of my job I'm often handed all sorts of devices to set up - I honestly hate every touch screen phone I've ever used, though what you say is definitely true - the good ones are less bad than they were two years ago. Though I dealt with a Samsung yesterday that only narrowly avoided being mashed with a 4 lb hammer - it was the most frustrating experience I've had in a long time!

It just isn't possible to replicate the tactile experience of a proper keypad on a perfectly flat screen, haptic feedback or not - surely I'm not the only one out there who thinks so!

 

[gregs656]

I found the opposite true! HTC has auto correct too, I'm a big fan of HTC phones and find Blackberries awful to type on, I guess it's what you get used to...

It does have auto correct but not across the whole platform like on the iPhone.

I had the desire for 18 months and had the iPhone for about 6 so I think I've had a good experience of both.

 

[daj]

I was a loyal blackberry user for years and went with the hype and joined the iphone massive ... I will be knocking on the blackberry door again when my contact is up :?

 

[old skool babe]

All BlackBerrys are shit........
Had 3 bolds. 4 or 5 curves..
And on my third tourch......

Save up and buy a iphone.. Thats what i did..
But got to say b,b's tablets are quite good.

 

[gregs656]

Another option perhaps is the new galaxy note. It's been quite a bit more popular than expected, and I imagine the on screen keyboard on that is quite a good size.

It is, perhaps, too big - but worth a look if you're passing a phone shop over the weekend I reckon.

 

[john]

All BlackBerrys are shit........

Hmmm.

Have to say I'm fairly set on another QWERTY phone, ideally a 'candy bar' rather than slider. If I really wanted an iphone / htc / samsung I'd probably get one. Surely the latest blackberry can't be as terrible as the latter symbian offerings? Having gone from the desire z back to the e72 for a couple of days it reminded me why I like that format, the hard keys are great for firing off emails, far better than the nominally bigger Desire Z. It also reminded me why I only used the phone for six months, if it all worked it'd still be great but the bugs and glitches are numerous still despite multiple firmware iterations since it's been in a draw. Glad I bought that sim free from Nokia.

Looks like I might try a blackberry. The 9900 gets an ok write up. Is the new OS really going to be worth it?

I do indeed need to go and look at a few in the shops. Shame most of the assistants are so pushy...

 

[The Ken]

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro, a bit older now but is a nice little phone (emphasis on little)

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones ... 076/review