Geoffrey DeFilippi

I’ve recently discovered the hard way the phone numbers that use the helpful syntax: 1 (800) YOU CALL are very difficult to deal with when using a phone with a qwerty keyboard.

I’ve got a blackjack phone and the keys don’t have the good old keyboard mapping to help determine which key is which number. So this helpful trick falls out of favor in my opinion. It appears that blackberries with full keyboard probably have this same issue. I know that the obvious solution is to remember the keypad association after all how hard is it.

The problem is I never do and there is nothing quick and easy to look at with a QWERTY keyboard where my numbers correspond with the QWERTY keyboard:

As you can see this make it very confusing to dial a number where the digits associated with the letters are not also listed. I understand that having a catching phase that is a number is a useful way to make the number memorable, but why not put the digits next to in in parenthesis.

The other part of the new keyboard is that voice activated systems that ask you to type something in based on the keypad mapping are almost impossible for me to do. For instance when asked to type in the first for letters of my birthplace I have no way to quickly respond other than running to find a “regular” phone. I’m becoming a bigger fan by the day of talking to the voice activated system.