Rotate the phone to horizontal and you pretty much have 1 line on the screen. Typing ssh commands over the touch interface is a lot of cognitive load, physical keyboard maybe a nicer interface..

Being able to touch-type is the reason I want one. You just can't do that with a touchscreen keyboard.

Can you touch type with only your thumbs? I don't think I could, but you'd have to with a keyboard that small.

Long-term Blackberry user (and I still have a Blackberry Key2) - Yep. I can type out entire grammatically correct paragraphs without looking at the phone at all. That muscle memory was carefully honed in the late 2000s high school classroom!

It's only if I get into the infrequently used symbols that I have to check what I'm typing.

In a quick online typing test I get around 60wpm/300cpm (characters per minute), 0.0% errors.

I was able to touch-type very quickly on my palm pre and palm pixi. Even a modern touchscreen swipe keyboard can barely compete, and you can't use a swipe keyboard without looking at it (well, not accurately).

It's been long enough that I can't guarantee it, but I recall it being very comfortable and fast to touch type on a Danger Hiptop as well.

I was able to touch type with my thumbs on my blackberry, in the before-times

touch type is just muscle memory - you absolutely can touch type with physical keyboards once you learn how.

touch typing on a virtual keyboard on a flat glass screen is hard because they keys are less accurate and don't give you feedback to whether you actually hit a key or not. So you CAN touch type on a screen, just with errors. Way too many errors. Which is why autocorrect is aggressive on all phones these days.

Back when we had physical keyboards on every phone, we didn't need autocorrect because the typing was accurate.

You may also like Pinephone with a hardware keyboard mentioned here: https://www.pine64.org/2021/02/15/february-update-show-and-t....

Hmm, is it possible to touch-type on a keyboard of that size?

Of course, it's even possible to touch type on a Nokia E55.

That was my favorite phone; I wish someone would make a modern version of it.

I used to do it on a Blackberry, which had an even smaller keyboard.

I think that actually is easier on a smaller keyboard, since you can reach the keys without stretching your thumbs. On this phone, you'll definitely be stretching your thumbs (on my iPhone 12, I can barely touch my 2 thumbs when holding the phone horizontally)

I have long thumbs so Blackberries were actually a bit too cramped for me to properly enjoy it. Touch typing was still possible, but less comfortable for me than on a side-sliding keyboard like the Droid line had.

If it is anything like the old HTC Desire Z, then it will be super comfy. The downside is the thickness and the increased risk of breakage due to having moving parts.