The Battle of the Keypads

For many years the vast majority of mobile phones utilised virtually identical numerical keypads. The numerical keypad was familiar to anyone with a touch tone or digital home phone and made calling people easy. As the text message revolution began to gather pace however it became evident that it can a little fiddly to write a substantial text message by repeatedly pressing each key to denote a letter. Technology is a continuously evolving beast and as such, to meet the demand for a more effective means of text input, manufacturers started implementing new forms of keypad- with mixed results. Switch to the modern day and the mobile phone market is considerably different and as a result of trial and error two forms of data entry have come to the forefront: the touchscreen and the scaled down QWERTY keyboard. Each offers its own benefits and of course its own downfalls.

The QWERTY Keyboard

As mobile phones grew in popularity, so did personal computers and as a consequence of the rise of the PC, people became increasingly familiar with the conventional QWERTY keyboard layout. The Blackberry was one of the first mobile phones to pounce upon this opportunity and due to its integration of fax and email: it made sense that the manufacturer RIM decided to take the leap into the integration of scaled down, full QWERTY keyboards as opposed to the conventional numerical keypads. The risk paid off and the vast majority of Blackberry devices, alongside numerous copycat mobile phones now take advantage of the this form of keypad to improve the user experience when sending text messages, emails or browsing the internet.

Although in many cases this keyboard format allows individuals to quickly enter data, it is not without its drawbacks. The most notable of these downfalls is the necessarily small size of each key- the less dexterously fingered may inadvertently find themselves mis-typing and generally failing to accurately and speedily enter text.

The Touchscreen

As technology continued to develop on all fronts, the previously SCI-FI wet dream of touchscreen technology became a feasible reality. The ability to manipulate information and navigate menus simply by moving one’s finger opened up entire new horizons. Although initially a little unresponsive and prone to calibration issues, the touchscreen is now an essential component of a huge number of modern smartphones. The iPhone for instance has successfully applied the abilities of touchscreen to whole new realms of application: mostly notably in this instance, as a means of transforming the phone’s screen into a complete QWERTY keyboard as and when required for the composition of emails, text messages and any other blocks of text.

The modern touchscreen is however still fallible to the occasional calibration issue which can render it unpredictable. Another potential downside in the eyes of many is the absence of the re-assuring ‘click’ resulting from the pressing of a key on a conventional keypad- which can cause issues if the user looks away from their screen whilst typing.

The Compromise

A number of recent mobile phone handsets choose to incorporate both touchscreen technology and pop-out, scaled down QWERTY keyboards in order to appeal to all parties. This compromise does however tend to come at a price: with these mobile phones tending to be larger in size in order to facilitate the auxiliary keyboard and occasionally eliciting confusion as to which means of data entry is required for the performance of certain tasks.

All in all there is no ‘best’ form of keypad, which explains why both types continue to exist in the modern mobile phone market. If you’re looking for a new mobile phone then your best bet would be to try out different handsets to decide which format best suits you.