BLAME it on the now dead O2 Xda Atom smartphone that has made me dead to the touch – of touchscreen gadgets, that is. 

They are everywhere, these peck-it pleasers: cellphones, netbooks and desktops too. And don’t forget the touch-smart interface of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 7, launching next Thursday, Oct 22. 

Windows 7 has neat pluses that make everyday computing easy. (Read Digital Life’s cover story on Oct 21.) But I won’t, er, touch any of the other gadgets with a 10-foot pole.

Not least, as I said, because of history. Four years ago, (2005) I bought my first smartphone – the Xda Atom – for about $1,000 but it turned out to be a horrible thing. The phone would hang, the screen freeze, and just getting to applications like the To Do liststook forever on the Windows platform.

True, these could be software setbacks rather than a hardware hindrance. Or that the particular piece I bought could have been a lemon: one colleague, who had the same model, had similar woes but they went away when he downloaded a software patch to his handset. 

True, too, such bugs in smartphone software have by and large been fixed. But even now I wonder about the phone that started the whole tap-happy trend – the iPhone. Or rather, I wonder about at its adorers. And the adorers of other finger-navigated handsets for that matter.

How do they use these cellphones without throwing up their arms in frustration at the bother of surface upkeep? Two women I know (identities withheld for my safety) polish their handsets – on their pants or a piece of sunglass wiper – after almost every other call or text message they make. 

And when they need to compose a text message? They hold the handset in one hand, and with a dainty index finger, go peck, peck, peck. Mamma mia.

If I already find it easier to flip than to scroll (easier to read a newspaper in print than on screen), then I will certainly find it easier to press buttons than peck at a screen. Texting on, say, a Blackberry is okay but doing finger calisthenics on an onscreen keyboard is not. 

Worse, I imagine, when you transpose all that "caressing" to a bigger appliance like a touch-smart all-in-one (AIO) desktop. If typing on a keyboard already induces wrist ache, what would stretching out your arm for hours in a day – to get around all the applications like browser, Word document or PowerPoint slide – do to your poor limb?

There will soon be more touchscreen buzz when telco M1 when starts selling the iPhone later this year.(2009) SingTel, which had the first bite at selling rights, has already sold "tens of thousands" of the handsets since August last year. (2008) But I doubt that M1 can count me as one more digit to this tally.