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.
A QWERTY flip phone would actually be sweet. Are there any examples from history, from the era when phones were fun?
Usually not flip, slide was pretty common though
It also wasn’t common but there was a Samsung Folder which was a flip phone and a Motorola Flipout which was a swivel phone. My point is, you could buy all kinds of wacky devices.
HTC Desire Z had swinging action which was pretty slick. Grit couldn’t get stuck in those sliders and it snapped open with a satisfying clack.
Not that I can remember, only the numerical pad with letters.
I think it wasn’t a thing because it was about keeping devices practical and portable… But that ship already sailed and sinked so I’d be up for something bulky but practical or just going back to numerical pad with letters.
Check out Sidephone.
Not sold in my country tho
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