This person has only used phones with buttons. He likes to read emails so has used several LG Env type phones on verizon.
Now his phone broke and pretty much the only qwerty phone is a Samsung, and then there are 100 smartphones.

He sometimes dials while driving (yes i know its dangerous), so something physical to guide his fingers is incredibly helpful.
Any advice?

What about voice dialing?

A proper hands free device like a Parrot with built in dialing capabilities would be better. Better still, get a car with Bluetooth integration but I'm guessing that might be a little over budget.

Is waiting for the Blackberry q10 an option?

Chances are, he doesn't have a data plan and his phone only costs him $40/mo. Any smartphone from the big providers will require a data plan and kick him up to $80/mo....

If you stick with a feature phone, just get a decent Bluetooth earpiece. Many support voice command. He can either tell it to dial a number or call someone by name in his saved list. This Moto HX550 has been suprisingly good for it's price.

I bought him a Jawbone before and he never used it. The car does have handsfree and he uses it to talk. But sometimes he needs to check email or reply.

Might just get a used qwerty phone for now.

Now that's mroe dangerous. There are cars now which will connect to certain phones emails and SMS's so that they can be read on the screen. I used to have a Merc which was really annoying in that it could tell you that you had a message by showing an envelope symbol but not show the message, hence it made it more dangerous by tempting people to read the message!

Oh oh... your paying an awful lot over there for plans.

I just changed my contract and booked for the next two years a SIM-only plan (Network carrier: E-Plus), including nationwide (german) free calls, free SMS and 500 MB internet volume, adding up to a total cost of 28 Euro/month incl. taxes and fees. The contract is a 24 Month agreement.

Phone plans are super expensive in the US with the major carriers (Verizon), especially for simple plans (few minutes, and few texts).
Next month, my 2 years contract with VZ is over and I'll be switching to Page Plus : same network, but $12 a month for 250 minutes and 250 texts, same for my wife (total of $24 including tax and fees, no contract, instead of our current2 year locked $80 basic family plan that doesn't even include texts !!!...)

back on topic : You could try getting a used phone on amazon, they have good deals, and you don't have to renew the contract. Make sure it's VZ compatible. You can make the phone change on your account page, it takes only a few minutes.

my nexus 4 is on a no contract $ 30/month pre-pay plan with 5 GB of data...the speed is 10-20 megs, over twice my home adsl2+...
tell him you can use speech to text and also have his incoming texts read to him.

if you need verizon coverage and frequencies, check out pageplus. -they have similarly priced plans and use verizon towers,

If pageplus is using verizon's network, how the heck does your Nexus 4 work on it...as Nexus 4 doesn't support CDMA.

I bought him a used LG octane (same one that got messed up). Hopefully it will work for now.
As for touchscreens, i will get him a tablet and get him used to the concept. Hopefully it'll help.
thanks for the advice

sorry to confuse....
im not on pageplus anymore, switched to tmobile when i got my N4. I just offered up pageplus as a low cost option if some one wants to stay on CDMA. ( i think they even had a $14 plan...)