THERE'S A PROBLEM with the new breed of touch-screen phones. They're tricky to use on a bus - on Dublin's scarred roads, anyway.With each new pothole, jittery fingers scrabble across the glass and morph "meet you in ten" texts into babble such as "Noddy your time" or, in the case of the Samsung Tocco (€369 from www.carphonewarehouse.ie), inadvertantly switch on the Irish-language predictive text and create messages that might have been written by a drunken exchange student on a boozy weekend in Doolin.
An old-school keypad would be better, such as the one that's hidden beneath the sliding touch screen of the LG Secret (free on 24-month contract from most operators), but that would leave less room for the impact of the colour graphics on the screen, as well as spoiling the nice lines of the rest of the phone, which is a rival to other 3G handsets such as the iPhone (€169 on an 18-month, €49-per-month 02 contract via Carphone Warehouse). And while there's no BlackBerry-style qwerty keyboard, the phone vibrates satisfyingly as you drag and drop widgets and folders off the screen.
The bus-text problem probably won't be an issue for most touch-screen phone users: with the Tocco heading towards €400 and the iPhone involving a hefty contractual commitment, the owners of these gadgets can probably afford to take a cab to work.
aharvey@irish-times.ie