Unlike us, Mr Andy Boxall missed the entire RIM BlackBerry generation. The poor man had only known phone keys in the range of 0..9!
Andy says he went "straight from an alphanumeric keypad to a touchscreen".
His first mobile-Querty experience was on TCL BlackBerry KeyOne (2017), which is not optimised for typing, and he has passed judgement on it: He was accustomed to touchscreens and struggled to adapt, but enjoyed the experience enough to be looking forward to the Key2 (2018).
I agree with Andy's assessment, so why are the TCL keys seen in 2017 not optimised for speed? The fundamental difference with older RIM keys is that they have a different shape on the right and left side of the device and a shorter distance left to right: That means your thumbs only count very short distances from any point, which results in faster keypress decisions. Lets hope TCL realise why RIM did that.
See Andy's story here on DigitalTrends,
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile...-appreciation/, which suggests iPhone/Android/BlackBerry fans can all agree that the Key2 is worth looking at.