[Jaruzel]

> The icing on the cake. I don't know who you know, but seriously, nobody wants a hardware keyboard.

Not true. If it were true the Blackberry KeyONE wouldn't have been the moderate success that it was. Clearly TCL believe that QWERTY phones are viable as they've just announced the Blackberry Key2.

My better-half has not one, but two, KeyONEs - one for work, and one for personal use. They are very nice, well built phones with a pretty good spec. If you type stuff all day, then they are a great option.

[distances]

Your experience is anecdotal. So is mine, and I haven't seen a single hardware keyboard in use -- not a single one, from any manufacturer -- since Nokia N900 was a thing almost ten years ago.

[Jaruzel]

It's not actually. What I didn't say, is that my other half works for a large Law firm. Most of the Partners there (100+) have switched from iPhones to Blackberry KeyONEs as they can actually work on them because of the proper keyboards.

At the end of the day, keyboardless and keyboard phones CAN co-exist. I was just disagreeing that with the point that no-one wants a keyboard phone.

[shinratdr]

> I was just disagreeing that with the point that no-one wants a keyboard phone.

Perhaps glib. I could have clarified further but "a keyboard phone could carve out a small but somewhat lucrative niche amongst people who refuse to get used to software keyboards, people over 30-40, and people who owned devices that sport hardware keyboards in the past but they are ultimately doomed to irrelevancy in the long run" is less pithy.

[hbosch]

I can’t find anything even close to “moderate success” for the KeyOne. Most of the articles I pulled up describe awful sales although Blackberry had an optimistic outlook. Most outlets citing sales numbers say that Blackberry only managed to outperform one company: the now-deceased Essential.

[shinratdr]

> the Blackberry KeyONE wouldn't have been the moderate success that it was.

Ok, well I come from the land of BlackBerry, and I have seen maybe one person with this phone in the wild. Keep in mind that BlackBerry was still a significant force here until years after it was dead everywhere else.

Just out of curiosity, how old is your better-half? Did they have a hardware keyboard device in the past?

[Jaruzel]

I don't think age has anything to do with it. People either prefer hard keyboards or not. Technology should be an enabler, and allow people to use the device formats they want. Just because 90% of people are now used to touch keyboards, doesn't make the remaining 10% wrong.

[axaxs]

i would buy a phone with a good hw based keyboard immediately. I was just thinking tonight, after correcting my 400th mistake, how weird it is we as consumers put up with this inefficient on screen keyboard.