That's not looks that's size and weight. That may sound like semantics but there is a difference -- I don't care whether the corners are square, or the colour or any other "design" queues. If it fits in a pocket and does the job it's fine by me.
As for the hardware keyboard they do seem rarer but there are still some out there. Touch screens are just too much hassle and utterly pointless for any use I'd put my phone to (calling, texting, email, browsing, some SSHing). Typing on a sheet of glass held in one hand whilst on a train, for example, is too frustrating.
Worst comes to the worst I'll buy an old Nokia Symbian like the E72 or something.
Seems to me "smart phones" are just getting more fancy and less useful.

You just sound like a grandparent.

TBH, I have a similar feeling towards all the people saying Gnome3 is awful and hurts their soul... ahh who cares, all you're doing is running Chrome...

I know. I use XFCE on my computers, oddly enough...
I would like to play with "apps" on a phone (there are some VLC remote control apps for example) but first and foremost I want it to do the main tasks well.

Whats wrong in expecting a phone to look good when it costs somewhere around 20-22K Indian Rupees? And it fits in premium phone market. At least here in India. I am okay with the color of the phone even if it is Black, mine BB is black. But then when you are paying the price for the gadget, it has to be worth the price, looks included.

The admonition, caveat emptor, applies all around the world.

If you are old and your fingers cant consistently zero in on the right square on those teeny-weeny virtaul keyboards ...

a virtual keyboard is no smaller than a physical keyboard on a phone.

With a physical keyboard I can "hover" my thumb[s] over the keys and can tell by feel which key I hit, the keys are also raised so it is harder to hit the wrong one by mistake. Using a virtual keyboard means having to hit a small spoton a sheet of glass first time. I have used a virtual keyboard which was as small as my real phone keyboard and it was almost impossible to hit a tiny section lf screen without touching the sections around it, making typing take literally ten times as long on occasion. Admitedly that was a small screen and a bad one at that but you cannot compare real and virtual keyboard sizes.

I accept. I have tried to use Sony ericsson X8. The screen was not too small and keypad almost as large as BB. But it still was sooooo difficult typing on it. Even the text messages were harrowing let alone a complete email. The size of the keypad is not the matter of concern.