Comment by Arnavion
6 years ago
(The very next paragraph after the one you quoted talks about how letters for European mobile phones were reintroduced some time later, now standardized so as to not have that problem.)
At any rate, the presence of lettered keypads doesn't mean people * had * to make mnemonic phone numbers with them, and it does look like (in Europe) only the UK had such numbers.
Apart from the US and UK, they might be popular in some Commonwealth countries too. I grew up in one and remember having them.
Yes, but only for SMS messages. They are not commonly used to write phone numbers (very occasionally you can see them now, but the numbers are also written below or next to them).
In the early automatic telephone years, letters were also used in the Netherlands, France, Denmark and other countries, but they fell out of use way before most people here were born, and also they were mostly (only?) used for area codes and exchange names/numbers, not subscriber numbers.
Sure, but the keypad for the phone app on your iPhone or Android has letters on it.
Duh. Who ever denied that?
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