[baddox]

That is a good point, although one could easily point out that “alphabetical order” is also a completely arbitrary convention, and we could just as easily argue whether we ought to change how we teach that order. Perhaps a different ordering of the alphabet, like sorting by usage frequency or grouping the vowels and consonants together, would help everyone learn to read and write. The same type of argument could apply to nearly anything. For example, in the English language, perhaps we should standardize spelling. This isn’t a novel suggestion. Mark Twain famously and perhaps apocryphally made such a suggestion. Why not just teach everyone in the world Esperanto or Lojban?

[bobajeff]

But my argument didn't involve teaching anything to anyone. It was simply accepting the fact that most people are more familiar to alphabetical order.

What benefit is there to having everyone hunt and peck on a phone to keep with a convention that only really makes sense to typists?

[c22]

The hunt-and-peckers will still be hunting and pecking on an ABC keyboard, at least the typists don't have to. Also, the first adopters of smartphones probably did have overwhelming keyboard experience, so I can totally see how we got here. Fortunately in phone land the default is just that and easily changed by anyone who thinks another layout would work better.