either they have more than 10 keys (or more) to dial any number or they are reduced to 2-3 keys, but then you need a special PC/Web interface to enter the numbers you might want to dial later on beforehand. Speech recognition is quite unuseful in public (think about Japan here ) - touchscreens might solve this issue- but by now are rather used for complex usecases, rather than offering a reduced but useful solution - besides that, touchscreens still lack the feedback- eventhough i am sur ethis could be easily solved (and price is another componenet here).
So let´s say: SIMPLY works easy, it´s simple but it might not be self-explanationary troughout all integrated usecases (and my mother in law would never gives hers away anymore)

I think we all are happy that Apple entered this marked- whatever they design (and will be designing over the next years)- it will help the marked to develop further and drive usability.
BUT:
we all should not forget that there were iconic mobile products before Apple…
One of the most simple and reduced handsets (which the i-phone isn’t btw) was the SIMPLY range developed by Vodafone’s usability department together with Sagem.
Unfortunately these products aren’t available in the U.S. (yet?) but they are in Europe and are extremely successful and easy to use. For all those who just want a mobile phone, here it is:
http://visionmobile.com/blog/?p=27

In Japan they’ve had predictive typing systems for years due to the difficulty of inputting kanji from a normal ASCII keyboard. The one thing that struck me as special about that market is that there are different companies that make different predictive typing plug-ins. In Japan, systems like Windows and MacOS are designed to accommodate these various flavors of “frontend input processors (FIP)” because each person has a different preference for how they express themselves semantically.

I’ve read a bit about the Symbian platform and how there are similar efforts ongoing for cellphones to make more advanced typing frontends. For now, I guess I’m still doing, “The lazy dog jumps over the brown fox.”

Typing is difficult. The letter keys are just pictures on the glass screen, so of course there’s no tactile feedback.

Software helps a lot. You can afford to make a lot of typos as you muddle through a word, because the software analyzes which keys you *might* have meant and figures out the word you wanted. Its best guess appears just under what you’ve typed; if it’s correct, you tap the Space bar to accept it and continue. I typed a couple of e-mail messages with lots of typos but eventually 100 percent accuracy, thanks to this auto-correct feature
cheers!

Looking at the keyboard, makes me wonder if the software allows customization of the layout. I can see the benefits of choosing a widely utilized and memorized layout like QWERTY. But typing with ten fingers is different from typing with one so there must be a better layout then QWERTY for one finger typing. Wouldn’t it awesome if customization of the keyboard layout is possible.