Steve reprises his 'Gotta have QWERTY' theme and explores the current options... (oh yes - and he promises not to mention 'Psion'!)

A selection of qwerty-keyboarded Symbian OS-powered smartphones (clockwise, the Nokia E90, E75, E71 and E61)

I've gone over my reasons for needing a 'qwerty' keyboard on a smartphone before, of course, see 'Gotta have QWERTY' as an example. Suffice it to say that for real world smartphone use (messaging/email/Twitter/PIM use, etc.), the entry of significant amounts of names, punctuation, URLs and other predictive-text-unfriendly material means that having a real, physical keyboard is just about essential.

But what are your options, at least within the Symbian OS-powered world? A majority of phones rely on a numeric keypad or a touch-screen and, fast though T9 can be at times, and as useful as a virtual, on-screen keyboard can be at times, they're just not the same as the real thing. Here are the current options, then.

 Nokia E90

One of the most frustrating smartphones of the last decade, when announced the E90 was exciting to say the least, with the highest overall specification of any device in the world. Alas there was a catch. It was running S60 - not in itself a dealbreaker, for the Eseries team had put in some effort to adapt the interface for the super-wide screen. Unfortunately, with the advent of S60 3rd Edition FP2 and beyond, it quickly became apparent that Nokia had stopped loving the E90. Not that users were expecting an upgrade as such, but despite graphics acceleration the E90 remains one of the slowest S60 devices - to this day I look at the E90 somewhat sadly and think how great it could have been given a lot more optimisation and general love.

 Nokia E71

One of the fastest S60 devices at launch, the E71 remains much loved by many. With an undemanding hardware spec (e.g. The smallish screen), there was little to slow the E71 down and this, plus the superbly thin and robust form factor, endeared it to owners. The only real downsides are the slowish multimedia, the weedy camera and the rather tiny key layout.

 Nokia E63

The chunky plastic offspring of the E71, the cheaper, lower-specified, plastic E63 does have a few improvements over its sister device: a 3.5mm audio jack, better key layout and (shock, horror) a dedicated LED torch key. Most people, budget permitting, will still want to pic the E71 instead though...

 Nokia E75

Perhaps the ultimate swiss army knife smartphone, this is a traditionally sized candy bar one moment and then a full width qwerty communicator the next, with one of the biggest and best keyboards around. Add in S60 3rd Edition FP2 and the E90's good camera and you're looking at more functions per cc than anything else. The downsides are an increasingly restrictingly small QVGA display and, at the moment, firmware that's in need of a round of performance optimisation.

 Nokia N97

What round up of qwerty on S60 would be complete without including the flagship touch phone that happens to open to also reveal a keyboard? Almost every geek who's tried the N97 has been a bit dismissive though - it is RAM, processor and (C:) disk-challenged though, and the minimalist three row keyboard isn't good enough to raise the profile of this device in the productivity stakes, sadly.

 Nokia 5730 XpressMusic

Essentially a plastic clone of the E75, but with slightly reduced application set and with the addition of side-mounted music shortcut keys, the 5730 is also distinguished by a rather stylised (love 'em or hate 'em) dot matrix key legends throughout.

 Nokia 6760/Surge

The newest device here, the 6760's the lowest specified and rather plasticky, but will still appeal to some because of the useable slide out qwerty keyboard, rivalling the E75 and 5730's, and the very low price. The camera's not a brilliant one though and there's no Wi-fi, a deal breaker for some.

Compiling the above information, it strikes me that there's no runaway winner in the 'QWERTY on Symbian' stakes. The newest two devices are also two of the lowest specified and with lowest build quality. The E90 should have been top of the pile and should have remained there, even today, but its firmware remains frustratingly forgotten. The E71 is a contender but the use of the older S60 3rd Edition FP1 lets it down slightly. The E75 is the best of the crop for me because of its large keyboard, decent camera and FP2 under the hood, but as noted above, the E75 does have its downsides too.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 26 July 2009