Is the reason nostalgia? Frustration with the iPhone's worsening software keyboard? Boredom?

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.

  • Furbag@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    48 minutes ago

    I miss my Blackberry Pearl…

    I fear that that design of phone layout/UI will never make a comeback.

  • Gleddified@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    The blackberry priv was the perfect phone form factor I just want that but with better hardware inside

  • Nalivai@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    4 hours ago

    The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2

    They just had to announce it after I ordered the one with all the “bizarre” gimmicks.

  • Cloudstash@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 hours ago

    These small keyboars are very bad and just really horrible when using. At least in my experience.

  • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    12 hours ago

    People should look into the ikko mind one too. Its shit that they have so much emphasis on their “AI OS” which is just an integrated app (which can be requested to be removed before delivery or removed via adb). But the hardware looks solid.

    Its a square screen phone that you can get a keyboard case for that includes a hifi dac. Its camera is a big sony sensor that can flip over to the front so they didn’t need to split the camera money between two or more sensors.

  • ramjambamalam@lemmy.caEnglish
    10·
    20 hours ago

    It’s amazing how homogenized phones became: Apple or Google flavoured slabs with a 6" or 6.5" display. That’s starting to change with foldable displays and it looks like 2026 might be a comeback year for hardware keyboards, so I’m optimistic about mobile devices being more than just social media consumption machines.

    Fifteen years ago you could get portrait sliders and landscape sliders and flip phones and BlackBerry style phones and phones that had game controls, and 4" slabs and 6" slabs (called “phablets” back then). There was so much more choice and it was so much more fun. Five years ago you couldn’t even get a modern phone that’s less than 6" so it fits easily in your pocket.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    19 hours ago

    Instead of ever-bigger screens thanks to flip open folding displays, how about the same size phone that flips open to an easily usable qwerty board?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      I just want Starks phone in the first Iron Man movie (I don’t think it was ever a real product) but as a modern smart phone.

    • Iced Raktajino@startrek.websiteOPEnglish
      5·
      19 hours ago

      One thing has become abundantly clear: You, me, and so many others in the comments here need to be in charge of phone design and not whoever’s been doing it for the last 10 years.

  • lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    21 hours ago

    I got the Unihertz Titan 2 in December and I absolutely love it. 12GB of RAM are amazing. The camera isn’t good, I hope they’ll improve that with the next model.

    Clicks is very quiet about the amount of RAM in their device, it seems like they haven’t finalized that yet. Given current RAM pricing, I fear a 6GB model coming… :(

    • Nalivai@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Oh, I also ordered one in December, waiting for arrival still. Glad you liked it, it gives me hopes. Are you finding it’s squareness to be an issue?

    • ramjambamalam@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      20 hours ago

      I loved my Passport but the Titan 2 just looked frumpy in a way that the Passport didn’t. It’s not looks that keeps me from buying it though; it’s the complete lack of security updates which would prevent me from using it for work. Unihertz has promised better support starting with Titan 2. If that turns out to be true, then the upcoming Titan Elite will be an attractive competitor to the Clicks Communicator, which has promised 5 years of security updates.