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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

> In the past, she memorized the number of presses on the “down” key that were required to scroll through her phone book to call someone.

Some things are lost when everything is touch. I remember writing fast on T9 keyboards, and with time learning the order of suggestions it was trivial to text without even looking.

There are also certain games that are hard to play on touch screens. I remember having a gameboy emulator on my old phone, using the number keys for some fast paced games. The same games are impossible to play on touch without feel for the buttons, a lot of misclicking.

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> Some things are lost when everything is touch. I remember writing fast on T9 keyboards, and with time learning the order of suggestions it was trivial to text without even looking.

My fingers are not refined enough to reliably hit the tiny hitboxes for regular touch-screen keyboards. This is both with "tap" and "swipe" keyboards.

A few years ago in a HN discussion about phone screen keyboards someone linked the MessageEase keyboard[0], which uses big buttons + swiping. It sounded very "T9"-ish, so I gave it a shot. It actually helped me avoid typos, and it's my "default" keyboard now (there are some quirks that result in it not working with some inputs some of the time, and it isn't up-to-date regarding emojis)

http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

I went with the literal T9 route... Got a KaiOS phone, also it has great repairability compared to any android available in my country.

> Some things are lost when everything is touch. [...]

> There are also certain games that are hard to play on touch screens. I remember having a gameboy emulator on my old phone, using the number keys for some fast paced games. [...]

Same here. I find even something simple as Tetris almost unplayable on a touch screen. I have the impression that kids generally don't have that problem, as they have grown up with touch screens. I don't understand how they do it.

100% agree. Most large mobile phones are useless. Can't feel the keys, or have touch.

This is why I really, really liked the idea of the Blackberry Storm back in the day. I, myself, bought a Blackberry Storm II to replace my Blackberry Bold 9000 and I was over the moon with the clickable touchscreen. I could type so much faster on it than my girlfriend with a first gen Samsung Galaxy S.

But the drawback was the software. It was slow, had few (decent) third party applications and in the end was not optimized for a touchscreen. I would love to see another, modern device like this though.

Have you tried the KeyTwo? It is a normal Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard. I love it.

I have had a touch screen phone for.. decades now?

I still never managed to learned how to use the keyboard correctly. I guess I have sausage fingers.

I was fine with a blackberry / palm and physical buttons. With any (small) touchscreen keyboard, I always have trouble with wrong entries.

I realize that I must be an exception, but personally I find the move to all touchscreen regrettable.

The menus could also be navigated using the number pad as shortcuts (first item=1 key, second=2) so getting to "write a new SMS message" could also be done blind in 2-3 key presses

Why don't you use a T9 keyboard anymore ?

It wasn't really T9 that was so good, it was the physical buttons. No misclicks, compared to a flat screen.

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