I really am surprised that with of all models of Android phones in the world, no one is making one with a keyboard. Even if it was a niche product, you'd think there would be an audience...
I'm typing this from my Unihertz Titan Pocket, which was very successfully crowd funded recently. It's a good little phone. Prior to that I had a Blackberry Key2 whinch was pretty much the perfect Android phone IMHO. I have a Gemini PDA which is a great concept but the hinge isn't practical.
Before that a blackberry Passport which ran BBOS. Loved it too, at the time.
These devices do exist, and the niche is strong enough to support a small market segment.
I've been drooling over the Titan, but the lack of an AOSP-derived ROM for it is an absolute blocker. I do not trust manufacturer's firmware one iota, no matter what, and this is only getting worse over time.
The best thing Unihertz could do in my mind would be to dump a bunch of support and money at LineageOS and get their phones supported. Especially the one with the DMR walkie talkie; the lack of third-party support for those is crippling them.
It is actually quite hard to make a GOOD physical keyboard, BlackBerry has this tech down. Any BlackBerry clone (I had a couple before ending on BlackBerry, Nokia and Samsung).
Titan pocket exists though, gets mixed reviews I believe but overall being 'not too bad', which is different than the love BlackBerry phones tend to get.
I had some old samsung phone with a sliding keyboard and it was really nice. Much faster than typing on an iPhone that's for sure not to mention you could do it with your hands in a hoodie pocket thanks to the tactile feedback. Seems like that would be pretty great again today, you get the full face as a screen then you just slide the phone in half when you need to type.
UniHertz Titan (kind of janky, but has a good hacking community), BlackBerry Key2, fXtec Pro and a few others. There is an audience, and we're out here being weird!
Planet Computers in the UK make one inspired by the Psion 5 PDA. I have a Gemini which is still going strong, and have backed the Astro Slide which is just about to enter production:
Same here - I absolutely don't understand how major manufacturers can completely ignore this market niche.
With all existing Android users, even if just 0.1% would like to have a keyboard you would still have a business ( https://www.businessofapps.com/data/android-statistics/ - assuming that only half of those 2.8 billion android users use a mobile phone and not a tablet or something else, that would still give you a market of 140M potential customers?)
Maybe it's about patents (keyboard tech)? And/or maybe Android users are really stingy (I would pay +50$ for an integrated keyboard, maybe most would not)?
The Xperia Mini Pro was the perfect form factor. Palm sized, qwerty slider. I replaced mine so many times that all my jeans had mini-pro-shaped wear patterns outside the pockets. I would pay so much for a version with modern specs.
Planet computers are making them, but based on Psion PDAs rather than blackberry. I had a Gemini, but physically it wore out rather fast, and the camera was rubbish. Not sure how good their next generation is.
