For a long time stock android didn't have T9 contact searching from the dialer (and, astonishingly, iOS still doesn't), something present since the Galaxy S1.

This is the first time I've heard of T9 being used since we moved on from the old Nokia phones that pioneered T9! Bring back fond memories of my Nokia 3310 and 8210. But yeah it's odd to see T9 in the context of a touchscreen phone...

I think it's a pity it's gone. I've developed https://typenineapp.com for iPhone, since I couldn't get used to the small buttons on the qwerty keyboard. I would dare to say I type almost twice as fast as regular qwerty phone users, and even without the tactile feedback I can do so without looking.

I've had about 60.000 downloads, and I almost never see a bad review, so I'd say T9 on a touchscreen has a place.

I love the T9 dialing on my galaxy phone. It's amazing. It saves so much time searching for contacts. Blows my mind that iphone doesn't have it.

Why would you need T9 on a touch screen? You can just display a full keyboard. That was the defining aspect of the keynote that launched the first iPhone, even.

There's nothing "astonishing" about it.

Because the T9 keyboard is already displayed, and the full keyboard isn't. It is a very fast way to search through your contacts directly from the dialier when I want to call someone, which is the primary use case of the dialer (calling someone already in my contacts).

For many people T9 is faster than QWERTY keyboard.

> Apple has never had a dedicated Siri button.

Sure it does. Right side button, hold it and it triggers siri. Single click locks unlocks the phone. This is identical to how the unlock/Bixby button works on Samsung.

That’s optional, and opt-in -- it asks you during phone setup whether to enable Siri.

It does try to nudge you into enabling it, but if someone kept pressing that button and invoking Siri accidentally, they could open Settings and search for “siri” to disable it, which I think is reasonably discoverable.

Bixby is also optional. You can disable the key trigger from the settings, exactly like iphone.

Depends what phone. S8 for example had a Bixby button that could not be disabled.

On my S10, there is a seperate Bixby button on the left side, so it's not shared with the unlock button. The best thing about the Bixby button is that I can freely remap it with third party applications, meaning I have a dedicated, customizable, physical button, something all phones should have.