Top Reasons to Choose Smartphones with Keyboards
Many smartphone manufacturers are not giving up on QWERTY keyboards. Smartphones with keyboards are still in vogue. A new poll conducted on smartphone indicates that these users preferred smartphones with QWERTY keyboards.
More than half of the respondents to this poll preferred QWERTY keyboards over touchscreens. And a very low percentage of them voted for number keyboards and voice command devices.
One of the chief reasons to this is that the QWERTY keyboard is the preferred way to type. This keyboard was inherited from computer keyboards. Users felt more at ease typing on these keyboards than touchscreen keyboards.
The preference towards QWERTY may or may not affect touchscreen technology
When you want to manage your photos such as resize them, touchscreens are good. You can also browse the web, play videos, games, and do many related things using a touchscreen keyboard. But somehow, touchscreen keyboards don’t fare well when it comes to typing.
Users are not acquainted with typing on placid touchscreen surfaces. This is because they learnt and did most of their typing on computer keyboards. And hence their preference for smartphones with keyboards.
Reasons why QWERTY keyboards fare better than touchscreens
Speed typing
If you send a lot of SMSs, emails, or write online content, then you ought to buy smartphones with keyboards. This is because QWERTY keypads enable speed typing. The rate of typing is faster than touchscreen keypads.
Accuracy
With QWERTY keypads you can expect to type accurately without making many mistakes. But this is not the case with touchscreen typing. You have to type slowly; otherwise you can make many mistakes. Another factor that favors QWERTY keypads is that users feel more confident of hitting a keypad button. They feel that they have actually pressed enough for the character to appear. But on a touchscreen keypad, users are not sure if they have pressed enough for the character to appear on their screen.
Resistant to damage
Smartphones with keyboards – the QWERTY ones are rugged than their touchscreen counterparts. Touchscreen technology is sensitive to wear and tear. It may get damaged if you were to accidentally drop it.
No Stylus for QWERTY keyboards
Touchscreen keypads have to be operated with a stylus. But QWERTY keyboards can be operated with your fingers. You can type with one or even two hands.
Reasons why touchscreen keypads are better than QWERTY keyboards
Elegancy
Touchscreen keypads are better looking than QWERTY keypads. They are sleek and elegantly designed. Smartphones with virtual keypads have bigger screens than smartphones with QWERTY keyboards.
Interactive user actions
Touchscreens allow you to perform a variety of actions to manage virtual content. These include swiping, pinching, and other such actions on the virtual screen. But in the case of a QWERTY device, you need to navigate your cursor and complete the required actions.
Touchscreens are also excellent for playing video games and using applications. QWERTY devices fall short in this regard.
Considering that smartphones with keyboards and the ones with touchscreens have their benefits, you can choose based on your personal preferences.
Some good and functional examples of best smartphones with keyboards
Nokia E7
E7 is technically an ‘older’ handset, but the software updates it received kept it competitive in 2012. Its biggest advantage is, the sliding keyboard. As you can see, it is both elegant and has a wide screen, but also you get a full width keyboard (for a smartphone) on which you can type much comfortably even better than normal qwerty smartphone variants. Has a 8MP camera, many business applications. But, it uses Nokia’s Symbian operating system, even if it is souped up. Yet still, if you can do without Android and iOS operating systems, this phone is a good candidate for a qwerty phone.
BlackBerry Bold 9900
RIM has always been good with keyboards even if its OSes were rather obsolete. This handset also has a very good keyboard with which you can easily and comfortably type. It has a 2.8 inch, a bit small screen, but the screen is touch sensitive. The “Liquid Graphics’ software the phone has makes pictures, photos handling much easier. It has a 1.2 GHz processor.
If you can still do with RIM’s old os, and looking for a very good keyboard and a still-competitive phone (and can do without Android or iOS apps).
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro
As name implies, this is a mini phone. This phone is running on Android, so unlike the other 2 phones above, you wont be missing on anything from the plethora of Android apps. Most beautiful part of this phone is it is very small, even though it has a full fledged qwerty keyboard which slides out. The keyboard may look a bit small, but you can easily get used to it. It has a 1Ghz processor, which may look a bit slow compared to full fledged, huge ‘phablet’ size phones coming out in 2012-2013. But, this phone is still quite alright to use in common daily tasks ranging from internet surfing to messaging, to emails and the like. 5 Mp camera a bonus. Maybe the most advantageous part of this Android phone is that it is cheap, compared to its competitors. Especially despite having a qwerty keyboard, and being quite small and handy.
