> People haven't abandoned QWERTY on cell phones - we replaced physical keyboards with touch, but the keyboard itself is still there.
I think the OP has quit the thread but hopefully you'd agree that it's not normal to refer to a standard iPhone or iPad form factor as an "actual qwerty device," and he probably meant something else entirely.
> Unihertz Titan and Cosmo Communicator
And I bet they sell literally dozens of those. The question is whether Kenwood or whoever would prefer to build something with a physical keyboard or something with a glass screen, if they took an interest in really pursuing what the OP was talking about.
There's a lot of stuff you could do. Being able to dock an iPhone or iPhone SE into a larger radio and use the phone UI to control the radio might work. Trying to replicate all the UI stuff a good phone, tablet, or laptop does on a radio feels like a doomed project for any radio manufacturer to undertake.
I'm not entirely sure what the OP meant, but the scenario as described - "a standalone handheld that I can type in a message without T9-style pecking" - would be served perfectly fine by an on-screen touch keyboard.
And there already are Android-based phones with transceivers! E.g. Unihertz also has one: https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom-xl. So basically it just needs to be something similar, but with APRS.
I think the OP has quit the thread but hopefully you'd agree that it's not normal to refer to a standard iPhone or iPad form factor as an "actual qwerty device," and he probably meant something else entirely.
> Unihertz Titan and Cosmo Communicator
And I bet they sell literally dozens of those. The question is whether Kenwood or whoever would prefer to build something with a physical keyboard or something with a glass screen, if they took an interest in really pursuing what the OP was talking about.
There's a lot of stuff you could do. Being able to dock an iPhone or iPhone SE into a larger radio and use the phone UI to control the radio might work. Trying to replicate all the UI stuff a good phone, tablet, or laptop does on a radio feels like a doomed project for any radio manufacturer to undertake.