Best touchscreen phones with keyboards

Round-up by: Flora Graham

Last updated: 29 Apr 2009

Touchscreen phones are hotter than a microwave pizza covered in magma sauce, but all that tapping might not sate your typing thirst, especially if you're big into texting or emails. For you, there's the touchscreen-keyboard combo.

By giving you the option to tap or type, touchscreens with keyboards can be the best of both worlds -- but beware, not all keyboards are created equal. First off, be sure to try before you buy to make sure the keys are large enough for your fingers. The space between the keys and the amount they depress -- called the travel -- can also affect how easy they are to use.

Keyboards will also make a phone thicker -- all those keys have to be stashed somewhere. There's a range of solutions to the problem of storing the keyboard away, from sliders to hinges, but it's really a matter of aesthetic taste which one you prefer. Just be sure you can open the keyboard comfortably without making a mess of things by touching every option on the screen at the same time.

Most touchscreens with keyboards have a Qwerty keyboard, like a tiny version of your computer's. But a new innovation is to have an alphanumeric keypad instead, which is the standard four-by-three layout that's typical on a phone. Just like texting on a non-touchscreen mobile, you'll have to hit the keys a few times to get the letter you want, or use the predictive text function.

Even Qwerty keyboards will usually offer some kind of predictive text, since typing on those tiny nubs is death to accuracy. It's horses for courses in terms of what suits your typing style, so again, you should test different designs before you commit.

Of course, there's also the touchscreen to think about -- check out our round-up of touchscreen phones to find out what to keep in mind there.