this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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409
QWERTY Phones Are Really Trying to Make a Comeback This Year (gizmodo.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by IcedRaktajino@startrek.website to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

What do you mean by "changing the layout", going from QWERTY to Dvorak, or something like switching between English and Chinese glyphs? Both are possible at least in software. Technically you can move around/replace keycaps to match your layout too, but obviously that would be super inconvenient to do regularly

[–] Michal@programming.dev 1 points 17 hours ago

Maybe he needs a steno keyboard for essays 🤷‍♂️