[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.