The time has come for me to acquire another phone, and this time I'm determined to get one that's not going drive me nuts.

If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.

Here's the problem:

*Every* mobile phone I've ever owned has been a source of irritation for me. This is because as soon as I've learned the menu system, and whatever variant of the predictive text system it uses, I end up pressing the keys faster than the phone can understand.

So, for example, on my current cruddy phone I'll press 'menu menu menu left' to get to the 'new text' screen and it'll sit there, and load the screens one after the other and eventually catch up with me about two and half seconds later.

Which is just long enough for me to get angry at it and its pathetic uselessness.

When I finally do start texting, the phone will typically be a couple of words behind me and will end up ignoring my requests for 'second item in the predictive text alternative word list' (e.g. 'bus' instead of 'cup') or I'll look at the screen and get confused about where in the sentence I am and make a mistake because it can't keep up with me.

At first, I thought I'd just made a poor choice in choosing a phone. But I'm now on my fourth phone, and they've all had the same problem.

I can't help but think that maybe phones are designed with a different sort of person in mind. I have visions of ham-fisted, drooling troll-people, pressing key by ponderous key with fingers the size of sausages, smiling contently and brainlessly at what is for them a perfectly responsive screen.

I don't want a phone that plays mp3s, I don't want a phone with pretty colourful graphics. I'm not interested in ringtones, or taking pictures.

I just want a stripped down, barebones phone that can make phonecalls, and send texts, and do so quickly and responsively. I want instant feedback on my keypresses, and it has to be able to keep up with me.

I don't care if it's got a really steep learning curve, it just has to be fast. Every phone I've ever owned has been the cellphone equivalent of Windows XP - bloated, slow, and full of things I don't need. What I want is the phone equivalent of the Linux commandline - lean, fast and responsive. What phones do geeks and touch-typists use?

Do such phones exist? Any recommendations for a phone that I can live with? Or are they *all* like that?