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It’s approaching three years since I emailed and got a reply from the late Steve Jobs. The topic of my caffeine-fueled missive that sunny day in June 2010 was the industry’s move towards touch-based interfaces and, specifically, Apple’s one-size-fits-all approach regarding the iPhone’s lack of a physical QWERTY keyboard.

I have a disability that can make touch and other physically demanding interfaces more challenging, I explained to Jobs, and whereas the mouse-driven GUI that he helped usher in with the Macintosh had inadvertently put me on a level playing field, were touch to ever become the dominant mode of input, it had the potential to turn that world upside down.

“That’s obviously a bit dramatic”, I wrote on TechCrunch at the time. “There will always be lots of different products on the market, but it’s a possibility nonetheless.” Fast forward to 2013 and what was only a possibility has all but become a reality. Survey the mobile landscape and it’s filled with people fondling their giant slabs of touch, happily typing away on glass.

At this point I know I’ll likely get ripped apart in the comments. In the battle of the physical vs virtual QWERTY, the market has spoken, they’ll say, and those who don’t favour touch are squarely out of touch. And sadly, the evidence is heavily stacked on their side of the argument.

Survey the mobile landscape and it’s filled with people fondling their giant slabs of touch, happily typing away on glass

In the first few years of the iPhone’s existence, a ton of hybrid physical QWERTY/touch smartphones from competitors entered the market, ready to differentiate themselves from Apple by talking up their superior typing experience. But they failed to stop the Cupertino juggernaught. Typing on glass, while not ideal, was good enough. Arguably it wasn’t until Android OEMs ditched their, largely, clunky slide-out keyboards and wholesale copied and then supersized Apple’s all touch form-factor, did they begin to turn back the tide.

Meanwhile, continues the argument, the likes of Nokia fell by the wayside, plagued by an antiquated user interface that, in a desperate and confused attempt to respond to the market, tried and failed to crowbar in touch before the company finally jumped onto Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, sans physical QWERTY.

Furthermore, BlackBerry, which seemingly built its whole business off the back of its physical QWERTY-touting credentials, chose to release its first comeback device as the BB10-powered Z10, another all touch grey slab, rather than the Q10, which combines touch with a physical QWERTY in the best BlackBerry candybar tradition. It’s also been suggested that the Canadian handset maker may even view the Q10’s hybrid approach as a way to wean its traditional customers off a physical keyboard entirely, a gateway device if you will.

So yes, putting aside the fact that the market can only speak to what is put in front of it — I can’t recall a single candybar QWERTY powered by Android that was anything more than a mid-tier or low end device — it would seem that the market has indeed spoken.

But it may not have had the final word yet.

That’s if — and it’s a big if — the BlackBerry Q10, when it finally hits the market next month, surprises everybody and sells in sufficient numbers to smash through the totalitarian all touch screen. And just like the Mac had ensured before it, for this hack and others like me, 2013 won’t be like 1984 after all.

I love my tiny little Mazda, but I’ll be honest — I still don’t completely understand how it works. That’s never really bothered me before (I’d much rather geek out over a phone or something) but a Kickstarter project from a small team in Boston has me itching to pay more attention to what’s really going on under the hood. Long story short, Dash combines a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled dongle that plugs into your car’s on-board diagnostics port with an iPhone app that gives you up-to-date information how on your car is holding up.

Yes, I know that probably sounds very familiar.

We’ve seen a few startups tapping into that particular port recently — Carvoyant inked deals with local auto dealers to more broadly distribute its always-on diagnostics and tracking gadget earlier this year, and Y Combinator-backed Automatic got plenty of attention for taking a similar concept and combining it with an awfully handsome iPhone app interface. Dash’s approach seems to resemble the latter slightly more than the former, but at their core they’re all trying to accomplish the same mission: to improve the driving experience by shining light on data that wasn’t always easily accessible.

So should you consider Dash over something like the ultra-slick Automatic when both devices are both slated to cost around $69? That all comes down to how you feel about the little tricks that set Dash apart from the oft-hyped California startup’s service.

In addition to tracking fuel usage, passing along notifications when your car’s components have gone awry and letting people locate their cars on a map, Dash users can use their smartphone as a secondary display of sorts for realtime information like current speed, engine RPM, and fuel economy. The big idea behind latter is that you’ll be able to find an environmentally-friendly sweet spot while cruising along, though chances are you’ve already got some sort of indicator telling you how fuel-efficient your driving is if you’re driving a more recent car. Still, since U.S. cars from as far back as 1996 have ODB ports there are plenty of drivers who could stand to benefit from this sort of info.

Oh, and a side note: if Dash appeals to you because your car’s built-in speedometer and tachometer don’t work, you should really get that taken care of first.

In case you were hoping to bring your social fixation into your car too, all that driving data can be automatically uploaded to an associated online Dash account. From there people can compare their own metrics to their fellow Dash users and pick up on best practices for squeezing optimal performance out of their rides (sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to mock them mercilessly for driving like your grandmother). What’s more, users can also record and share in-car video with speed and engine information overlaid on top of it, well, just because.

Those of you looking to make your iPhone an extension of your car have to consider that the Dash still seems like a long way from fruition. At time of writing the team’s Kickstarter campaign has raised just over $15,000 from backers, and is ultimately shooting to top $750,000 before May 11. Should the Dash team meet that lofty goal though, they hope to get the first batch of dongles out sometime this June — just in time for summer roadtrip season. Sadly, just like with Automatic, Android users will have to wait until later in the year to get their mobile car diagnostics on.

One of the big stories to follow in 2013 will be the intensifying competition among smartphone vendors for market share in important emerging markets such as China, Brazil and India. Forbes points us to a new survey from mobile marketing firm Upstream showing that Samsung (005930) is the most popular smartphone brand for prospective buyers in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and India, while Nokia (NOK) holds onto the top spot in Nigeria, where Samsung didn’t register on the survey. The survey also contained some potentially troubling news for BlackBerry (BBRY), which only registered double-digit interest from prospective buyers in Nigeria while falling below 10% in the other three countries. Upstream founder and CEO Marco Veremis tells Forbes that BlackBerry and Nokia tend to do well in African nations because they provide “easy access to social networks and the Web” and, especially in Nokia’s case, they offer superior battery life.