Any touch typist recognizes the sequence in the title. They are the “home-row keys,” the ones you rest your fingers before typing, the ones you come back to after typing.

They are taking over the cell phone world. According to an AP story in today’s Norfolk Virginian Pilot, cell phones with QWERTY keyboards are the coming thing in the cellular world. Most of the new cell phones, whether phones or PDA’s, at last week’s trade show in Las Vegas, had full keyboards, either physical or touch screen.

Read the story here.

I recently accompanied a friend who was shopping for a new cellphone.

She didn’t want a PDA phone like mine (which I usually describe to those not familiar with it as a “computer with a phone attached”), just a plain old phone phone, and ended up choosing a phone with a retractable QWERTY keyboard so she could text-message without agony; the keyboard was the feature that closed the deal for her.