Ah, nostalgia. My first smartphone (which pales to call it that by comparison to today) was the old HTC Fuze WinMo 6 phone when I was still on AT&T. My first true (by modern standard) smartphone was when I switched to Sprint - the beloved Samsung Epic 4G QWERTY slider.
I've long since left behind any regrets of not having physical keyboard options when you get down to it, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that didn't still miss those days.