Best QWERTY Android phone?

norweger said:

Hello,

My HTC Desire Z isn't working properly, so I am thinking about buying a new QWERTY phone with android. Does anyone know of a full list of such devices? Or have any suggestions as to what phone to go for?

I type faster with a QWERTY keyboard than with any touch keyboard (even with apps made for typing faster), and type speed is the most important feature to me.

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It may depend on your carrier. I would suggest going to your carriers web site

You can also check with the major phone manufacturers websites. They often let you sort their most current product portfolio by form factor and you can choose QWRTY slide out. I am pretty sure HTC's website does this. (Then you can select to see which carrier uses the device).

As you know, the quantity of choices in slide out keyboards dwindles every year.

norweger said:

Hello,

My HTC Desire Z isn't working properly, so I am thinking about buying a new QWERTY phone with android. Does anyone know of a full list of such devices? Or have any suggestions as to what phone to go for?

Click to expand...

I also used to own an HTC Desire Z because I felt I type better with a physical keyboard. I ended up getting an Samsung Galaxy S3 last summer because there simply were no phones with keyboards that didn't suck compared to the high end keyboardless phones. Since then, the only decent keyboard phone is this one: Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G review: T-Mobile's QWERTY slider falls flat

Not sure if this is your carrier or if the phone is compatible with your carrier.

I type faster with a QWERTY keyboard than with any touch keyboard (even with apps made for typing faster), and type speed is the most important feature to me.

Click to expand...

Should you decide to go with a touch screen only phone, I have this past week finally found a keyboard app that actually help me type faster and more accurately than on a physical keyboard. That app is SwiftKey 4. As a fan of physical keyboards, I suffered for half a year with my SGS3 until I got SwiftKey this past week.

SwiftKey's text prediction is so good that and the way it presents the text prediction allowed me to type faster than on my keyboard phone and is able to correct many errors allowing me to type more accurately. I turn auto-correct off, but I do have the prediction on that presents me with a choice of up to 3 words that SwiftKey thinks I intend to type. I would say that almost all the time, the text prediction's first choice is the correct one with the occasional time the second, third choice is correct. The rare time does come up when it get is wrong, but that is due to my making really bad errors. As much as I hate touch screen keyboards, I have to concede that a touch screen keyboard and SwiftKey is better than the physical keyboard of the Desire Z for me.

I suffered through months of bad typing because the SGS3 was such a good phone. I did consider ditching it for the phone I linked to you above. In the end, I'm glad I stuck with the SGS3 as I have found a more than satisfactory solution to a physical keyboard. There are many great phones out there, but none save perhaps the upcoming BlackBerry Q10 have a physical keyboard.

Should you choose to get a keyboard phone, understand that it will either be an old phone or a low end phone. If that is what you feel you need and are willing to make the tradeoff, then the above link is the best that I can do. The Motorola XT860 (I think it is also called the Droid 3) came out in the summer of 2011. Prior to that the Sony Xperia Pro came out around the same time. My wife used to use a Samsung Galaxy Q, but it really sucks and is no where near an HTC Desire Z is in power and quality.

If wuth Verizon I would guess the droid 4. Although it's already obsolete hardware wise and I haven't heard of any new Qwerty phones released recently or even in devolpment.

I wouldn't say it's the best, but the Samsung Stratosphere II is out and have better specs then the one I have. To be honest, I hardly use the physical keyboard much anymore. I like the thinness of phones and the on-screen keyboard more.

The droid series is really the only device that has a full keyboard and still is considered high end-ish

I almost bought a Motorola Photon Q, until I learned you can't pull the battery. That is really a non-starter for me, no way to really reset the phone if it locks up or gets hot (as happens sometimes with my Epic 4G).

Of course, soft/predictive keyboards are a non-starter for me as well, they mangle the heck out of unix and specialized software tool commands. I don't often code on my phone, but I often (several times a week) need to text or email back command lines to co-workers who are having difficulties. If I have to get my laptop to write technical responses, then why bother having a smartphone?

So, I hold onto my ancient Epic 4G, and my money as well.

vobguy said:

Of course, soft/predictive keyboards are a non-starter for me as well, they mangle the heck out of unix and specialized software tool commands. I don't often code on my phone, but I often (several times a week) need to text or email back command lines to co-workers who are having difficulties. If I have to get my laptop to write technical responses, then why bother having a smartphone?

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When I type something that I expect not to be in the predictive dictionary, I just type slower and check my typing more carefully. I would expect that predictive keyboards will recognise often typed commands. The difficult will probably be in the parameters as they can be rather cryptic and will likely not be consistent from one message to the next.