Yeah, my favourite was the brief period where there were full physical qwerty keyboards on phones, which existed before smart phones did because texting was popular before smart phones. Also, smart phones existed before iphones did and I held on to my BlackBerry torch for a while after iphones and later android were a thing specifically because I knew I’d hate touchscreen keyboards.
Phones actually de-enshitified, too, because there used to be a huge market for things like ringtones, wallpapers, emoji packs. I remember getting a special cord to connect my phone and PC to be able to set my own shit because I wasn’t paying for a 20 second clip from a song, not to mention no one was even trying to sell the FF battle music as ring tones, which I thought was perfect because phone calls are like random encounters lol (boss battle music for my parents haha). These days you can just set those.
MrShankles@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
I loved using T9 and used to blind text all of the time. With touchscreen, it took me so much fucking longer and you can’t look away. I’ve gotten over it now, but I miss me some T9
psycotica0@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I’ve had that thought before too, but until I just read this now I’ve never thought about it before but… we could just make a wireless T9 keyboard. It could be about the size of a car’s keyfob, basically all battery and 3x4 grid of tactile buttons. And so all you do with it is hold it in your off hand and type with your thumb, that’s it. But it’s a Bluetooth keyboard that just understands T9 and works with any phone. Or even tablets or laptops if you wanted to pace around while typing.
Like, there are chorded keyboards and stuff like that, but I don’t know I’ve seen a thumb-only phone-layout wireless keyboard before…
MrShankles@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Holy shit, I’m sold! You can have to rights, just make me an honorable mention lol
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It would honestly not be too hard-- you’d just need the keyboard itself, a very small programmable chip, a bluetooth module, and a battery. I might try it if I can find the right components-- the keyboard itself seems like a really weird component but I’m sure there are at least good alternatives.