Here’s a random photo from the Medical Imaging Department at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, where my mom had some tests done a week ago today. She turns 90 next month, and her age is catching up with her. This post isn’t about her, though—it’s about my brother’s BlackBerry Classic.

What can I say? I’m a horrible son. 😉

To get dear old mom downtown to see her doctor—and then across the street to the hospital for the additional tests—required the co-ordination of her full-time caregiver, my brother and myself. Complicating things was the fact that my brother had to excuse himself for a meeting he couldn’t miss at work; he asked me to keep him updated via email while he was away. It was during this time that I found myself suddenly and surprisingly jealous of his BlackBerry. It quickly became apparent that he could respond to my emails faster than I could compose them!

Now I love Android and everything it can do, but where it, iOS and the rest fail and fail hard is text entry. I don’t mean quick tweets, IMs and status updates—I mean thoughtful, longform text-based communication where details are important. You might think that such a thing would be altogether obsolete in 2015; based on the situation I found myself in at the hospital I’d disagree. Maybe I’m too old myself, but stabbing my thumbs against a vibrating glass screen while simultaneously keeping a watchful eye on my virtual keyboard’s very necessary autocorrect suggestions isn’t nearly as efficient or satisfying as using a physical qwerty keypad. And I say this having not owned such a device in almost five years.

In almost every other aspect of mobile computing—gaming, watching videos, blocking ads and installing my own firmware—Android is clearly the right choice for me. And yet, at least for that one afternoon, I would have gladly swapped it for a BlackBerry.