> I was more productive with phones that had a physical QWERTY keyboard
I miss those too.
My favorite was the Samsung Sidekick 4G. I was able to modify the keyboard map to include the missing ASCII characters, and actually did a little programming with it. The HTC G1 had a decent keyboard too. After the Sidekick 4G was past its prime, I considered trying to mod a Motorola Photon Q to work with my carrier, but the phone was expensive.
I never really liked the phones that had portrait mode keyboards like the BBs though.
I've been using the unihertz Titan [1] for the last couple of years, and more recently (last 6 months or so) the unihertz Titan pocket [2] - The Titan had a bunch of UX issues, which almost all have been fixed in the pocket version. The cameras on them are very bad, but with the price for the device I was able to pick up a half decent camera cheaper than a flagship phone would have cost me anyway. The battery life is a god send, lasts a whole day of solid use, 2 days+ with minimal usage. All apps I've used work fine with the keyboard, and I'm much more productive using a qwerty keyboard, and the keyboard shortcuts you can assign than I ever would be with a touch screen.
I've been using a BlackBerry Key 2 for the past few years, that I got new. It's a great Android phone with a keyboard. I'm sad they discontinued the line, the build quality is great and the keyboard is great. Fortunately it's just an Android phone so there may come a time when they discontinue support and I have to flash it with a modern distro but that should at least be possible, assuming the phone lasts that long.
That won't be possible unless you own a special unit. The bootloader on these devices is completely locked down and there's no way to unlock it - so you're going to be stuck running the official software forever.
I had a Curve 83xx, it was great. I had a qwerty keyboard phone a few years later and it was terrible in comparison.
Whether the issues with the 83xx are glossed over between both it being my first phone which had practical utility beyond phone/sms and nostalgia, or if there was something particularly good about it, I'm not sure.
I do know that Microsoft should have bought RIM back in 2008, it was their only chance to compete in the mobile market, the blackberry was actually popular in a way XDA etc wasn't.
RIM lost because of stuck-in-the-mud boomer IT departments locking down so the CFO couldn't play candycrush or angry birds on his phone, and Microsoft had a similar mindset back then, so it likely wouldn't have work. Instead CFO buys an iphone, then tells IT to make email work with it, and it's gone. It was the embodiment of the star wars "tighten your grip and systems fall through your grasp" phrase.
I could touch type and required less autocorrect.
Like autocorrect today still doesn't support typing Spanish with 'vos' conjugations well.
For example it keeps wanting to change the 'to be' verb 'sos' to 'SOS' or a 'SOS' emoji.
Has any of you used modern phones with physical keyboards? How has your experience been?