But there are times that its actually very useful... like anytime you want to use landscape mode with your keypad out.
I use that all the time with my slingbox because I want quick access to all my assigned shortcut hotkeys without browsing through the silly menu. Just # to access shortcuts, then use keypad to open my guide, previous channel, channel info, channel up/down. Or even without navigating the menu, its nice to have the keypad open to switch the channel on the fly if you know what channel number you want.
Honestly, I can't believe that s60 doesn't have this feature available as a native option.