[HN Gopher] Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
___________________________________________________________________
Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
Author : phantom_oracle
Score : 399 points
Date : 2021-04-01 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fxtec.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fxtec.com)
| smdz wrote:
| Had been waiting for something like this few years back and with
| Ubuntu. But with M1 chip's success, I think we are much closer
| and it could be worth waiting for an iPhone (or a bulky iPhone)
| with something like MacOS that docks into a desktop or lapdock.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| So many OS options, but no webOS open source edition. I might get
| one just to port it. I miss that OS and my Palm Pre.
| fragile_frogs wrote:
| webOS was such a good mobile OS, the Palm Pre is hands down my
| favourite phone.
|
| Imagine how awesome webOS would be today with the support of
| PWAs?
| seanhunter wrote:
| There's no free lunch, and it's easy to overlook the compromises
| involved in the devices that used to have physical keyboards. By
| modern standards, blackberrys had a woefully small screen and
| phones with slideout keyboards were very fat. This device doesn't
| look fat which suggests to me that the compromise might be either
| battery life or low processor power.
|
| That said, although this is definitely not for me, it's generally
| good for the market to have some devices that are genuinely
| different rather than just another "me too" Samsung/iphone
| lookalike.
| bogwog wrote:
| This is such a pointlessly negative comment. Not all phones are
| designed for you personally, and what you perceive as a
| "compromise" can be a selling point for someone else.
|
| My favorite keyboard phone was the Blackberry Passport. It had
| a 1:1 4.5in screen, and a physical keyboard with capacitive
| sensors on it so that you could scroll by swiping your thumb on
| the keyboard rather than the screen (among many other useful
| gestures).
|
| IMO that's the best form-factor for a phone ever. Peak
| productivity and excellent build quality, a great screen, and a
| perfect size. The only problem was that it came from a doomed
| company.
|
| Maybe you think the 4.5in screen is a "compromise", or the 1:1
| aspect ratio, or the shape of the device (exact dimensions of
| an actual passport). All of those were things were why I loved
| the phone so much.
|
| It's just a shame it came from a doomed company.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Passport
| lotsofcows wrote:
| IMO the Nokia E7 was the perfect phone in all dimensions.
| Modern phones are impractically large. Man, I'd love to see
| some innovation in phone design. How did we go so far
| backwards?
| wazoox wrote:
| It _is_ really fat: about 14mm, nearly twice as thick as most
| current phones.
| technofiend wrote:
| The HTC Dream was 17.1mm thick. That was a nice size because
| you could thumb it open with one hand. It also had a decent
| keyboard with tactile feedback. I'm not sure anyone wants a
| clicky-clicky mechanical keyboard on a phone but I doubt they
| want a sea of dead chiclets either. So some thickness given
| over to key travel and click is IMHO perfectly fine.
| ianai wrote:
| I don't mind more thick than current phones. There's
| absolutely no reason to think every user has the same demands
| for form factors. Just like some people would only ever buy a
| truck and others sedans.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't get the use case for thin phones, and believe it's
| just marketing-driven preference. We're told thin phones
| are better over and over, and slowly the market starts to
| believe it because the message is saturated and there's no
| counter-message to it.
|
| It couldn't be that thick phones are heavier to carry
| around. The difference between a 8mm phone and a 16mm phone
| couldn't be more than 200 grams or so. That's making you
| sweat as you carry it? It couldn't be that it's tough to
| hold up to your ear. My Nokia 7210 was probably one of my
| best phones ever and it was by today's standards a thick
| brick. Google tells me it was a whopping 17.5mm thick. So
| what is it? What practical benefit do you get from a thin
| phone? The only thing I can think of is the ability to
| carry it stealthily in your pocket, but is that really the
| driving use case?
| Snitch-Thursday wrote:
| I own one. Mine feels no thicker than the Samsung Galaxy in a
| case. As long as it perceptually feels more or less like a
| box of playing cards, I'm not worried about thickness.
| mywacaday wrote:
| It really depends if it needs a case or not, my note10+ feels
| fine with a case and almost too thin when the case is off
| macksd wrote:
| I agree. My Pixel 3 feels great in my pocket, but it's too
| thin and slippery in the hand. My case is for comfort as
| much as its a precaution!
| NathanielK wrote:
| That's about as thick as most phones with a "Tuf" case.
| degenerate wrote:
| And that's without a case! I can't even imagine what a case
| would start to look like for this thing. It would be its own
| feat of engineering...
|
| Then again, if you're always holding it with two hands, who
| needs a case, right? :th
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Half-height, allowing the screen to slide out? Probably
| with a separate one with 4-corner shock bumpers on the
| screen.
| notum wrote:
| Or a zip-lock bag. Which would also make it waterproof!
|
| It's thin, light, when inflated it provides excellent
| protection, why doesn't everyone carry their phones in a
| sandwich bag?
| afandian wrote:
| Some of us still use wired headphones!
| bserge wrote:
| A completely removable sleeve is more useful for such a
| phone imo
| bserge wrote:
| That's the thickness of the original Motorola Droid, which
| was comfortable imo, I loved that phone.
|
| Although the display is bigger on this Pro1X, I don't think
| it would be that uncomfortable to use, as the times of being
| able to grip the phone by both sides with one hand are long
| past. The way I hold them now is by having 4 fingers behind
| and praying it doesn't slip, I guess.
| remram wrote:
| It does look like two phones. I wonder if it wouldn't be
| better to make it actually two phones (or separate phone-
| sized devices), so you can use the touchscreen part as a
| phone, and have the other part be a pluggable keyboard +
| powerbank.
| jostylr wrote:
| The textblade (https://waytools.com/ ) would be the ideal
| form factor in my mind. Unfortunately, it has been 6 years
| since they said they were going to release it though there
| have been people (testers) using it for real for several
| years.
| jolux wrote:
| If it's not released it's pretty suspicious that they let
| you buy one without mentioning that.
|
| edit: this thing looks like a total scam. Announced as
| being 12 weeks out in 2015, taking orders, and still not
| released in April 2021, yet still taking orders? That's
| more than a blown deadline at this point. They're lucky
| they haven't seen legal action.
| alexvoda wrote:
| I saw the Textblade the first day it appeared on HN and I
| still droll over it. It's a real shame the company has
| been so shady (and they were from the start). I would
| really love for someone to clone it and actually bring it
| to market.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Issue with separate devices is now half the time I won't be
| carrying the keyboard because it's extra optional bulk.
| Also the connection would probably be much crappier meaning
| the form factor won't be as convenient, the keyboard being
| part of the phone means they're pretty well connected where
| the two separate pieces version doesn't have one.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It's kind of crazy to me that people are concerned about the
| thickness of phones, yet nobody bats an eye when they keep
| getting bigger and bigger in the other dimensions. I guess
| screen size trumps all other concerns.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Right. My Palm Pre fit in my pocket better than any modern
| smartphone where almost all models are starting to push a 6"
| diagonal. The corner invariably digs into my hip when I sit
| down.
|
| For women it matters less since pockets in women's clothing
| are a joke
| filmor wrote:
| Same here. It's near impossible to get a <5" phone
| nowadays, and everything else is too big for me. I really
| really liked my Pre3, maybe I'll just start using it again
| when my Samsung A3 finally dies :)
| [deleted]
| regularfry wrote:
| It's to do with pockets, at a guess. There's no penalty for
| expanding in the height and width dimensions up to the limits
| of a back pocket, which is comparatively huge.
|
| If you expand in the depth direction, the pocket can't expand
| far before it starts to feel uncomfortable, particularly if
| you sit on it.
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| People sit on their phones?
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| People put phones in their back pockets?
| regularfry wrote:
| Yes.
| jbay808 wrote:
| I put my phone in my front pocket. My front pocket can
| accommodate reasonably thick items like my wallet, but if
| they're too wide and long, it interferes with my ability to
| bend at the waist.
| regularfry wrote:
| Keys and change go in front pockets. Things with screens
| don't go in those pockets.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Keys in my left pocket, phone in my right.
| kroltan wrote:
| It might be local clothing design, but I haven't seen a
| back pocket so low that you could actually sit _on_ a
| phone.
|
| The geometry works out that the pocket is halfway from your
| back and your leg, so when you sit the phone would be at a
| 45 degree angle.
|
| Half of it would be under compression from your weight in
| the horizontal direction, and the other would be in tension
| from the pocket pulling it into the vertical direction.
|
| Not a healthy situation for your comfort, your phone's
| integrity, and the pocket's half-life, regardless of a
| phone's dimensions. In fact, a larger surface-area phone
| would work even more as a lever than a vaguely thicker one.
|
| So I just put the phone in the front pockets.
| regularfry wrote:
| I didn't suggest it was a good place to put it, just that
| people do.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| I don't like using phones without a case because they're too
| thin for me. I get cramps.
|
| So thickness wouldn't be an issue for me. I hope I'm not the
| only one.
| aerique wrote:
| I've used its predecessor the Pro1 with Sailfish OS for 4
| weeks. (While having fond memories of using my Nokia
| Communicator in the past for SSHing into servers to fix
| things.)
|
| For me, the compromises were not worth it. The phone is too
| clunky and heavy and virtual keyboards are good enough these
| days.
| Snitch-Thursday wrote:
| > For me, the compromises were not worth it. The phone is too
| clunky and heavy and virtual keyboards are good enough these
| days.
|
| There are compromises like I said in previous posts. Frankly
| I love the physical keyboard not for long form text, but for
| my terminal operations or just plain old character-by-
| character cut/copy/paste edits in text. If there were a
| virtual Ctrl key on my on screen keyboard so I could do Ctrl
| + V, then maybe I would swap to something else too, but for
| now this fxtec takes the mobile cake for anything more than a
| 7 word swype reply to a text.
| opan wrote:
| >If there were a virtual Ctrl key on my on screen keyboard
| so I could do Ctrl + V, then maybe I would swap to
| something else too
|
| Hacker's Keyboard and AnySoftKeyboard have this. Also,
| Termux can add these keys above your keyboard for terminal
| tasks at least.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Uhhh, that lady's long fingernails using the small keyboard in
| the promotional video are annoying.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I've had phones with landscape and portrait mode keyboards, and
| the latter were invariably better. Maybe it's just that Palm and
| RIM were better at making keyboards, but I'm not interested in a
| landscape keyboard at this point
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| I would put an offensively large bet on BlackBerry putting
| absurd amounts of effort into their keyboards, instead of
| landscape being inherently worse. Based on everything I've ever
| seen, heard, and read, they cared _deeply_ about hardware
| design. "Losing the Signal", regarding the rise and fall on
| BlackBerry, made it clear they tested for things like drops
| extensively, and (IIRC) went as far as literally throwing at
| least one device around to ensure it would survive.
|
| And then they were pushed to push the Storm out the door, which
| pushed many people away. Things only really went downhill from
| there, sadly. That said, my KeyOne is still my favourite phone
| ever, and I'll carry on with it as long as I can purchase
| replacement components :)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| On further reflection, I think that it's just not that much
| worse to two-thumb type on a narrow keyboard, and a landscape
| isn't big enough to five finger type, but to big to single-
| thumb type.
| antattack wrote:
| The promo for Pro1X makes privacy claims but doesn't Ubuntu
| collect telemetry data from their OSes?
|
| As to the phone, at first I thought the mechanical keyboard is
| useless, however I can think of situations where on-screen
| keyboard would cover too much of screen real-estate. External
| keyboard lets you see more, unobstructed.
| flatiron wrote:
| Ubuntu collects: Ubuntu version OEM/Manufacturer Device model
| number BIOS info CPU details GPU details Installed RAM
| Partition Info Display(s) details Auto-login status Live
| Patching status Desktop environment Display server Timezone
| [deleted]
| jancsika wrote:
| Can't you turn that off, though?
|
| I think I turned it off on my laptop.
|
| How do you turn it off?
| le-mark wrote:
| Display area is one major benefit. I had a google g1 long ago
| and I've missed that keyboard ever since. Imo pressing physical
| keys is far superior to pressing glass.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| may they also would need less energy if you can create a
| smaller screen and instead add a keyboard (no net loss of
| content screen space). I do not need a big screen.
| artembugara wrote:
| Last summer, Maksym and I (2 co-founders of NewsCatcher, full
| team) went to the beach. It was like 1 hour walk from the place
| we were (where all laptops were).
|
| By the time we were at the beach, we began receiving the alarms
| that our ElasticSearch does not receive any new data.
|
| Maksym had to debug from my iPhone XR (and he actually succeeded
| in 20 mins). That was this time I though it would be nice to have
| a phone like Pro1X.
| ISL wrote:
| A small folding bluetooth keyboard can be awesome in this
| situation.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| While it is badass that you guys fixed a prod issue on the
| beach using an iPhone, I don't think this new device is the
| only / best solution. The situation could also be solved by
| keeping a laptop or an iPad with a keyboard case in your car /
| bag if you are the one constantly 'on-call'... most people have
| predefined on-call hours and wouldn't need to sacrifice their
| stable daily driver cell just for physical keys
| artembugara wrote:
| I agree, however, I'd prefer just putting this phone into my
| pocket.
|
| iPad with a keyboard is definitely better but it's also not
| compact. Plus, I don't really want to bring it to the beach
| (because no matter what I always end up cleaning all my stuff
| from the sand)
| dschuetz wrote:
| Welp, the pre-order site is down, I guess due to the hug of death
| from HN? I'd also really like to order one of those.
| opan wrote:
| Don't expect support as good as a PinePhone. If this is anything
| like the Gemini PDA, it will only really work well with Android,
| and there will be many proprietary blobs that are reused via
| libhybris because of drivers being Android-only.
|
| There are phones that only officially support Android and get
| mainlined and can run postmarketOS, but the shim that sorta-kinda
| works may dissuade people from doing this proper level of
| support. Again, look at the Gemini PDA and how its pmOS support
| is worse than some Samsung phones.
|
| MediaTek and binary blobs are the source of the problem, but a
| company choosing these parts and then over-promising GNU/Linux
| support should not be ignored either. If you've ever shopped for
| a router to put OpenWrt on, or tried to run the Linux-libre
| kernel on a laptop, you'll know some companies are to be avoided.
| Broadcom in a router is never good, for example, and because ASUS
| chooses them often, ASUS is not really good either.
| rjsw wrote:
| A keyboard is under development for the PinePhone.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Website is slow to load but I finally got to see the price after
| a few attempts: $899 USD.
|
| I love the idea and really need a new phone but man I wish it was
| a little cheaper. $500 or so it would be a no brainer but at
| close to a grand I feel the need to shop around.
| adenozine wrote:
| Nerd in me: This is badass, I want one.
|
| Brooklyn in me: My entire office is going to absolutely clown me
| for life if they ever see me with this goofy thing.
|
| It's a brave device, that's for sure.
| AnssiH wrote:
| Huh, everyone is always intrigued by my Pro1 (looks same as
| Pro1X but black).
| faichai wrote:
| Going to school, age 17, in 1995 gleefully making notes on a
| Psion Series 3a was brave!
|
| Carrying around a no-name phone in 2021 that your friends take
| the piss out of, means you just need new friends.
| andagainagain wrote:
| once I stopped respecting coworkers personal decisions, it
| made more sense to just ignore them and get what makes sense
| to me.
|
| they don't like my phone, too bad for them. I don't like
| theirs.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| The Nokia Communicator dream never dies. The original 9000 series
| was first introduced impressive 25 years ago.
|
| At one point I had a HP Jornada 720 running Jlime Linux with a
| PCMCIA WiFi card for wardriving (15 years ago).
|
| One of my first smartphones was Xperia Mini Pro with a slide-out
| keyboard and I loved that thing (10 years ago). This is also
| around the time of Nokia N900 which had a deserved cult
| following.
|
| These days I think regular smartphones are good enough for
| quickly replying to a mail, for any serious work I'd use a
| laptop.
|
| I don't see a niche for this any more.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| I had the original Nokia Communicator as well. And I still have
| a Jornada 720. I also had a Psion 5 and a Psion-style keyboard
| (from the same designer) is being used on the Astro Slide
| mobile phone which is scheduled to ship in June, (I have one on
| order).
|
| https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...
| log101 wrote:
| What is the advantage of the slideout keyboard? It might save
| some pixels while you type, but it looks very uncomfortable.
| moistbar wrote:
| Being able to touch-type is the reason I want one. You just
| can't do that with a touchscreen keyboard.
| fsflover wrote:
| You may also like Pinephone with a hardware keyboard
| mentioned here: https://www.pine64.org/2021/02/15/february-
| update-show-and-t....
| psychometry wrote:
| Can you touch type with only your thumbs? I don't think I
| could, but you'd have to with a keyboard that small.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I was able to touch-type very quickly on my palm pre and
| palm pixi. Even a modern touchscreen swipe keyboard can
| barely compete, and you can't use a swipe keyboard without
| looking at it (well, not accurately).
|
| It's been long enough that I can't guarantee it, but I
| recall it being very comfortable and fast to touch type on
| a Danger Hiptop as well.
| darau1 wrote:
| I was able to touch type with my thumbs on my blackberry,
| in the before-times
| volkl48 wrote:
| Long-term Blackberry user (and I still have a Blackberry
| Key2) - Yep. I can type out entire grammatically correct
| paragraphs without looking at the phone at all. That muscle
| memory was carefully honed in the late 2000s high school
| classroom!
|
| It's only if I get into the infrequently used symbols that
| I have to check what I'm typing.
|
| In a quick online typing test I get around 60wpm/300cpm
| (characters per minute), 0.0% errors.
| andagainagain wrote:
| touch type is just muscle memory - you absolutely can touch
| type with physical keyboards once you learn how.
|
| touch typing on a virtual keyboard on a flat glass screen
| is hard because they keys are less accurate and don't give
| you feedback to whether you actually hit a key or not. So
| you CAN touch type on a screen, just with errors. Way too
| many errors. Which is why autocorrect is aggressive on all
| phones these days.
|
| Back when we had physical keyboards on every phone, we
| didn't need autocorrect because the typing was accurate.
| log101 wrote:
| Hmm, is it possible to touch-type on a keyboard of that size?
| moistbar wrote:
| I used to do it on a Blackberry, which had an even smaller
| keyboard.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I think that actually is easier on a smaller keyboard,
| since you can reach the keys without stretching your
| thumbs. On this phone, you'll definitely be stretching
| your thumbs (on my iPhone 12, I can barely touch my 2
| thumbs when holding the phone horizontally)
| moistbar wrote:
| I have long thumbs so Blackberries were actually a bit
| too cramped for me to properly enjoy it. Touch typing was
| still possible, but less comfortable for me than on a
| side-sliding keyboard like the Droid line had.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Of course, it's even possible to touch type on a Nokia E55.
|
| That was my favorite phone; I wish someone would make a
| modern version of it.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| If it is anything like the old HTC Desire Z, then it will be
| super comfy. The downside is the thickness and the increased
| risk of breakage due to having moving parts.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Rotate the phone to horizontal and you pretty much have 1 line
| on the screen. Typing ssh commands over the touch interface is
| a lot of cognitive load, physical keyboard maybe a nicer
| interface..
| yndoendo wrote:
| I bought into the original project and still looking forward to
| receiving it, even with design changes.
|
| Currently have a 5+ old phone that stopped being updated after 2
| years by one of those big players. Hopefully this will push to
| the Linux mainline and have longer security.
|
| Only use these as a phone, messaging, and reading news /
| articles. Don't game or other things. Hate using touch keyboard
| so much that when I'm reading and wish to comment I waiting until
| I get home and have access to a real keyboard.
|
| Even installed KDE Connect so I can use my laptop / desktop
| keyboard to type messages. Hate touch keyboards so much when you
| actually want / need to convey information.
|
| Specs are not the best but that is not my focal point. An usable
| phone with long security updates that runs a mainline Linux
| kernel is. Hoping in the long run hackers will pick at it and
| find a way to de-blob to evolve it even more.
| aquir wrote:
| Promising but I will wait until to see some independent reviews.
| The reviews for other Linux phones are always terrible so I am
| really looking for a simple smartphone running Linux
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| The only change between this phone and the pro1 (non-X) is the
| downgraded processor -- so I encourage you to check out the
| original pro1 reviews. For the most part they are 'if you want
| a keyboard it is a good phone--it is otherwise mediocre in
| every way'. Also - the 'linux' support is a bit of a stretch,
| the community ported over ubuntu touch which is basically just
| android.
| devilduck wrote:
| Would rather have a heavily upgraded N900
| namlaswad wrote:
| Reminds me of that failed kickstarter campaign
| raesene9 wrote:
| For another option, along similar lines, which has been shipping
| for a while now, there's
| https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices
| antattack wrote:
| They seem to have better keyboards, however clam-shell design
| disadvantage is that you always have to have the keyboard out
| in order to use the device.
|
| It's more like a miniature laptop than a phone.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| The Astro Slide isn't a clam-shell, unlike their first two
| offerings. I have a Gemini which I use as a PDA and it's
| great. The Astro Slide should give me the best of both
| worlds, (I have one on order).
| spurgu wrote:
| Yeah I've looked at the Gemini and Cosmo before but the
| sliding design of ProX and Astro Slide is what makes me
| seriously consider buying one of these devices (in which
| case I'd lean towards the Astro).
| cstross wrote:
| Note that Planet Computers are currently developing the Cosmo
| Communicator, which kinda-sorta resembles the Pro1X layout,
| except with the (vastly superior) Psion-descended keyboard
| design of the earlier PC machines:
|
| https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...
|
| As it's their third iteration I'm reasonably confident that
| this isn't vapourware and will ship some time after June (it
| was originally promised for March but COVID19 has hit everyone
| -- along with chip shortages).
|
| For those who haven't used a Gemini PDA or a Cosmo
| Communicator, the Planet Computers smartphones have a keyboard
| descended from the late 1990s Psion Series 5 PDA, which
| actually has reasonable travel and tactile feedback rather than
| the chiclet style keys of the Nokia N900 or Blackberry or
| Pro1X. This means the Astro Slide is inevitably going to be a
| bit fatter than the Pro1X, but be easier to type on (and has a
| similar dual-mode use case, with a big touchscreen and a slide-
| out keyboard). The Astro Slide also promises 5G connectivity,
| 8Gb of RAM, and support for Linux OSs as well as Android.
| habeebtc wrote:
| I owned the Gen 1 Gemini PDA (RIP).
|
| It was a breath of fresh air in a world of samey Iphoney
| devices. Eagerly awaiting my Astro Slide.
|
| My only real complaint (having been a Nokia 9290 and E90
| owner) is that the screen didn't have a variable angle it
| could sit at.
|
| Solid hardware, solid software (to the extent you can get
| Android software which functions in landscape mode). I never
| got around to installing Linux on it.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Ubuntu touch is the worst of all choices for a linux phone right
| now. It is based on obsolete ubuntu sources and the browser is
| really limited
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| I didn't even know it was still around. I remember installing
| it on my Nexus 4 to play around with it in like 2014 and it
| seemed like a mockup. All the "apps" were just links to mobile
| sites. Which I suppose is to be expected since Twitter or
| Facebook is never gonna make an app for a platform with no
| users.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| From what I've seen, Ubuntu Touch is the best mobile "Linux"
| distributions. Other, purely Linux operating systems lack
| common apps, have janky UIs and are barely functional on most
| hardware.
|
| Ubuntu Touch runs on whatever the manufacturer or Qualcom have
| put down as a basis, instead of relying on a standard, open
| Linux kernel with open drivers. This has all the downsides of
| the Android kernel, but at least it's functional.
|
| The point of having it run Ubuntu Touch is to show that the
| phone is not locked down like nearly every other (usable) phone
| in the market today. If pmOS or KDE Plasma get ported to the
| device, those systems will probably have the preference of most
| die-hard Linux users. Doing so requires a lot of work, though,
| and I wouldn't be surprised if improving or even just using the
| reverse-engineered drivers for many kinds of smartphone
| hardware would violate the NDA manufacturers sign with Qualcom.
|
| To me, this device looks like what the Oneplus One looked like
| when it was first announced: an Android phone that doesn't lock
| its users out of the system. Getting any non-Android OS to run
| on the device underlines that without going through the effort
| to make everything nice and open.
| andagainagain wrote:
| But it is far more likely to actually work. Obsolete sources or
| not, they're further ahead for actual phone stuff than
| basically anyone else.
| realusername wrote:
| It's not _that_ bad, it was way ahead of it 's time with the
| way the full screen navigation was handled. It's obviously a
| bit dated now but more due to a lack of users and interest than
| anything else, I'm sure it could be brought back to a more
| modern stack if the community was there.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Ubuntu Touch is alive and kicking as its new avatar at
| ubports.org. It has some rough edges, but I think it has lots
| of potential.
| yrgulation wrote:
| This brings about fond memories of my htc tyntyn. Shame it ran
| windows but it was a cool device. I could ssh into my servers
| back when almost no one even saw a touch screen, and the keyboard
| albeit small, was amazing. If this device delivers then i am 100%
| buying it.
| alfl wrote:
| Physical keyboards have interesting usage modalities.
|
| One of my colleagues told me she missed physical keyboards
| because touchscreens are harder to use with acrylic nails. They
| can be used without turning the screen on, etc.
|
| I wonder to what extent input technologies have a fashion cycle.
| imbusy111 wrote:
| I see little advantage vs. any other Android smartphone +
| Bluetooth keyboard of your choice.
| Sodman wrote:
| Being built right into the phone is a _huge_ advantage! Even if
| you manage to get a perfect bluetooth connection (which, on
| Android, is a much bigger ask than many realize), and ignore
| the fact that you now have another separate device to charge -
| there 's no beating this form factor. Your options are to use a
| horrible oversized clamshell design (eg [0]) that turns your
| phone into a tablet, or don't physically attach to your phone
| at all and end up being a 2nd device / accessory to carry
| around with you / manage / lose.
|
| [0]https://www.amazon.com/BESTLIFE-Universal-Wireless-
| Bluetooth...
| Sodman wrote:
| I still consider my old Nokia E70[0] my favorite phone of all
| time, so I am definitely in the target demographic for this, as
| I'm 100% sold on the usefulness of a physical keyboard on a
| phone... However the CPU just doesn't match the "pro" branding,
| or the price range. I'd personally rather throw an extra $200-300
| on top to get a flagship CPU and then it would be close to a
| perfect phone for me! As it currently is, the Snapdragon 662
| shipped in the pro-1x gets blown away by my current Pixel 5's
| Snapdragon 765G - and Pixel phones recently have been generally
| characterized as having "above-average hardware specs but not
| enough to justify flagship prices".
|
| Separately, I am also curious for a phone like this that could
| run Android, LineageOS, and Ubuntu Touch - are there "dual boot"
| options in the mobile space? With 256GB storage it seems like it
| should be possible. I'd like to have old reliable Android as a
| daily driver, but maybe periodically drop into a less stable but
| more flexible environment like ubuntu.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E70
| k_ wrote:
| Seems like we're looking for similar things. I am currently
| waiting for delivery of my Astro Slide [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-
| slide-5g-transforme... which has android / linux dual boot. Not
| sure if performance are what you are looking for.
| minimalist wrote:
| I had a Cosmo Communicator and sold it in short order when I
| realized that: - Pinephone has better Linux support and
| always will. Planet Computers' phones all have mediatek
| chips, which will be stuck on ancient kernels with dogshit
| driver support for things like the camera. - It will be
| impossible to find parts, so I would have to gingerly baby
| the thing and worry about the hassle productivity loss if my
| phone broke. - The thing is huge. Just about the size of a
| pinephone if not larger. The keyboard addon to the pinephone
| looks like it will turn into something identical, albeit with
| a slower processor and ancient GPU but at least parts are
| found plenty if something breaks. It's something to think
| about.
| Sodman wrote:
| This looks much more like what I'm looking for alright! Doing
| some background research it looks like they had some issues
| with their chipset supplier and had to downgrade the chip a
| little, but performance benchmarks put it ~around the same
| place as my Pixel 5's current CPU, which I'd say is much more
| acceptable (if not totally cutting edge flagship-tier) for a
| phone in 2021!
|
| At $576 (Edit: now $621, looks like the early bird just sold
| out!) this also seems like a much better deal than the pro-1x
| at $800! I'm always worried though when the "pledge store"
| for these things says things like "Ships March 2021!" but
| their most recent update says they've just finalized their
| PCB and are just starting testing...
| arpa wrote:
| August is likely target date for astro.
| undecisive wrote:
| Yeah, there was some weirdness on that - they tried to
| change it and things went wrong.
|
| If you have a look at the updates, specifically the Week 42
| Update, they have a revised timeline:
|
| Final Astro - PCB March 2021
|
| Production Master - March 2021
|
| Final Testing and Debugging - May 2021
|
| Device Certifications - May 2021
|
| Mass Production Start - June 2021
|
| First shipping - June 2021
|
| They're more or less on track, it seems...
| k_ wrote:
| Not sure if that's still true, but a few months ago when I
| ordered mine early bird had always 0~3 in stock and they
| added some back the day after it sold out, every time.
| Check again tomorrow if you're interested but only at a
| discount.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Are you sure that thing is legit? As a designer, I'm looking
| over the pics and my gut feel is that something is off. Look
| at the picture of the girl taking the selfie, where's the
| hinges like the guy to the left, or the sandwhich line which
| isn't visible?
|
| Anyone else have comments on the included photos?
|
| I mean I do hope it is legit.
| k_ wrote:
| I do hope too, and it seems so to me. At least the product
| seems real, they're sending updates on the board etc.
| they're building. And their previous products are real
| ones, with users right here on this thread.
|
| Also, the overall design changed a bit since those pictures
| were made. They had some issue with the processor not being
| available anymore iirc, and they made some changes. Changes
| including a significantly smaller battery, and we all
| complained about it so they went back to the original
| battery _but_ with a thicker phone.
|
| I still have some doubts. I have a blackberry keyone that I
| loved but that is half broken since a bike accident so I
| have to replace it. And a linux phone (with multi boot to
| android in case linux isn't up to the task for a phone,
| which I doubt a little) seemed like a good replacement. But
| portrait keyboard, and blackberry's keyboard quality might
| be a lot better than this solution.. I wish they didn't
| stop making blackberry (on android) phones after keytwo =/
| xbeta wrote:
| I still think the best keyboard smartphone were my
| BlackBerries, and I still miss typing on a HW keyboards.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I have a Gemini that can triple boot ex. between Android,
| Debian, and Sailfish, so it's been done, but that was designed
| in by the manufacturer. There used to be some Android multiboot
| hack (multirom or something?), but I don't know details or if
| it's still around.
| stevecat wrote:
| The Nokia E72 was my favourite phone form-factor. I really
| wanted to try Android but was so resistive to keyboardless-
| phones that I bought a HTC ChaCha, regretted it immediately,
| and finally relented. I still miss a keyboard.
| megous wrote:
| There's "dual boot" in mobile space
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GjXQFnMHGY :)
| OnionBlender wrote:
| I don't need a permanent keyboard. Can someone suggest a good
| portable Bluetooth keyboard for Android?
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Looks quite cool, and seeing that the order page is taking a
| hammering, I'm sure lots of orders are being placed. However the
| name reminds me of HBOs Silicon Valley show where they end up
| over-jargoning the product names. I wish they had come up with a
| more friendlier and catchy name like "Slidey" or something.
| tedcrilly wrote:
| And they could then call NFC "Slidey sense".
| theodric wrote:
| I bought into the Planet Gemini on the promise of a Linux-
| multiboot Android phone with a physical keyboard. The keyboard is
| too small (and poor) to be usable, the Linux distributions never
| progressed beyond alpha quality (not graphics acceleration even!)
| and the Android base was abandoned after two major revs. This one
| looks very much the same, down to the software base. I've learned
| my lesson about these kinds of devices, and I won't be going back
| to the well for another drink. I'd encourage you to consider well
| before getting too excited.
| jmartrican wrote:
| Would this have access/capability to install apps from the google
| app store?
| AnssiH wrote:
| Sure, if you use Android on it. I have the Pro1 (previous gen)
| and it is fully Google certified.
|
| Probably not if you use Ubuntu on it.
| L29Ah wrote:
| likely doesn't run GNU/Linux, as only android drivers-supporting
| distros are listed as supported so plenty of blobs and not much
| to upstream
| froh42 wrote:
| I wonder why such devices have such a "meh" processor. This thing
| has a worse one than my several year old OnePlus 5.
|
| Don't know if it can do HDMI or DisplayPort output, but assuming
| that (and using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse) it might be a
| ultra-portable work machine for me, so I don't need to schlep my
| laptop around. But not with a meh processor, then it is only a
| phone with a keyboard.
| westpfelia wrote:
| Part of the problem is they have been selling this phone for
| years. After constantly having his shipping date pushed back my
| friend was able to get his money back for his preorder back in
| 2017
| swiley wrote:
| Most SoC manufacturers are very user/developer hostile or just
| sloppy. It takes a long time to clean up the mess to the degree
| that you can run a decent OS.
| dmos62 wrote:
| But a non-meh processor means less battery time. I'd prefer meh
| processor to meh battery life. Meh.
| varispeed wrote:
| I would prefer a better CPU and a power bank in my bag.
| dmos62 wrote:
| It depends on whether or not a person has a use case for a
| better cpu.
| kevingadd wrote:
| That's not necessarily true, if it remains clocked down most
| of the time and is using the low power 'little' cores the
| difference isn't going to be that significant.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Can someone expand on this? My anecdotal experience
| contradicts this and I don't know much about CPUs.
| bogwog wrote:
| ARM chips are heterogenous, so while they may claim to
| have 8 cores, not all of those cores are the same. Some
| are low-power cores meant to save battery power, and the
| high power cores are only activated when necessary.
|
| Plus regardless of that, just because a CPU is old
| doesn't mean it's more power efficient than a new one. If
| anything, it's usually the other way around.
|
| edit: more info at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE
| SergeAx wrote:
| For Linux device I would expect a system slider setting like
| "speed/battery".
| dmingod666 wrote:
| I used to own an HTC one with a slide out similar to this, that
| was a good phone..
| andrew_ wrote:
| It's astonishing to me that folks are still releasing phones
| which have no IP rating, let alone devices that are not fully
| waterproof (IP67). I'm probably in a class of folks who are in
| and around water more than most, however the flagships have all
| adopted this.
| fsflover wrote:
| AFAIK it's very hard for a small company to make their device
| waterproof. And we certrainly need more competition in the
| smartphone duopoly.
| andagainagain wrote:
| This will always be a problem, because the problem is basically
| "It suprises me that not everyone has the fancy features
| advertised 3 years ago on a flagship device".
|
| It's like people being suprised that the newest laptops don't
| all have high DPS displays and thin bezels, but they ignore
| that 1 - those aren't easy to engineer and 2 - they sacrifice
| things like repairability, reliability, and manufacturing cost
| to do so.
| darksaints wrote:
| If you would have asked me 10 years ago, this would have been my
| ideal phone. But not anymore. For two reasons:
|
| 1) touchscreens have gotten a lot better...they're not perfect,
| but they're finally good enough for a phone. And not having a
| physical keyboard means fewer moving parts, and fewer physical
| design constraints, which translates to higher reliability and
| better performance.
|
| 2) Android and linux in general are not good enough for phones. I
| want a better security model. Android could have been built on
| top of any kernel...they had to build all of the userland and
| drivers from scratch. I'm disappointed that Linux was chosen
| instead of something like L4 or QNX, which would have allowed us
| to sandbox code that could be potentially malicious, deny access
| to sensitive resources like location, etc. It would also be far
| more reliable, with the ability to restart individual
| malfunctioning driver code instead of your whole phone. And most
| of the freedoms that come from rooting your phone would be built
| in.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Will this have mainline Linux support?
| dusted wrote:
| give me a smartphone with a slide-out t9 compatible physical
| keyboard
| svacko wrote:
| The pre-order site https://store.fxtec.com/product/fxtec-
| pro%C2%B9-x-256-8gb/#t... says "Be one of the first to pre-order
| your Pro1 today. Shipping globally is estimated to be September
| 2019." ? Is it in the pre-order state since then?
| xearl wrote:
| That page you linked to is for the Pro-1. The OP is about the
| newer Pro-1x.
| LilBytes wrote:
| Well, was the Pro-1 ever delivered!?
| rchaud wrote:
| Yes, there are several Youtube videos with reviews of the
| device.
| Snitch-Thursday wrote:
| Yes. I have one. Mine was ordered in Feb 2019 for shipping
| in August 2019. Come February 2020 it finally came in.
|
| Biggest favorite is that I love they keyboard. I run the
| LineageOS 17.1 simply because I've been too lazy to flash
| LineageOS 18 unofficial. tdm the primary developer did a
| great job making the keyboard act well, and other
| developers made it behave via an app in Stock Android.
|
| Second biggest favorite is that it has the trifecta of
| features I require from any phone: unlockable bootloader,
| microsd card, headphone jack. I prefer a removable battery
| but alas those are as thin as hen's teeth.
|
| My biggest beef with this phone is that it has spotty voice
| reception. I have to stand in a particular spot in my house
| to not have my UDP packets drop off. Data reception is fine
| and when I do calls over signal or duo (wifi) it works a
| treat.
|
| My second biggest beef would be the lack of snap-on case
| options like the old Nokias. I'm trying to figure out if
| someone does a 3d printed case or what, but with this
| curved screen, I'm nervous that each day could be this
| phone's last with just one fall.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| Top comment as of right now says [1] they ordered one but
| was never delivered, and the seller never answered to
| emails.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26662123
| usr1106 wrote:
| Well, the top comment says they waited for 6 months until
| they requested a chargeback. The grand parent says they
| got theirs after 7 months. Not a contradiction.
|
| The have been numerous such alternative phone and tablet
| projects during the last 12 years or so. Crowding funding
| or with a bit more of a commercial touch. All have failed
| to to deliver on time I would claim. Many if not most
| have failed to deliver at all. I would not call the
| founders dishonest. But whoever starts such a project
| lacks realism. It's incredibly complicated to make a
| phone, let alone a good one.
|
| (I don't say the world would be a better place without
| optimists and over-optimists.)
| LilBytes wrote:
| FAQ says the following, unsure if it's a typo or perpetually in
| pre-order.
|
| https://store.fxtec.com/product/fxtec-pro%C2%B9-x-256-8gb/#t...
|
| "
|
| The current estimated shipping date to pre-order customers is
| September, watch out for updates over email or on social media:
|
| Twitter (@thefxtec), Instagram (@fxtec), Facebook (fxtec)"
|
| Other commenter is right, the Pro 1X has the following:
|
| "SHIPPING IN AUGUST 2021"
| sheepybloke wrote:
| Like the concept, but $800 for a phone with Snapdragon 662[1]?
| Even with the keyboard and other pluses, that's a hard sell. That
| processor will be fine for most applications, but I'd hope for
| something slightly more powerful, like a 730G. I feel like a 662
| might be too limiting, and at $800, that's a very crowded market,
| even if you are targeting a more open device.
|
| [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-
| Snapdragon-662-Proces...
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yeah, I was fully on board until I saw the processor.
| lallysingh wrote:
| They probably don't have the quantity to get access to better
| chips+support.
| auiya wrote:
| No way, I can type an order of magnitude faster on a soft
| keyboard.
| tifadg1 wrote:
| For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works
| astonishingly well. So much so that I use it regularly because of
| lazyness.
|
| What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to? Youngins were
| born and raised touching the screen, so it's archaic to them. Old
| timers are jaded at this point to either wait for their dream
| phone or buy any cheap crap.
|
| So who's the target for this 900 usd device?
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| If you can't type on an actual keyboard, touchscreen typing is
| barely a downgrade from hunting and pecking.
|
| If you can type quickly, touchscreen typing is really fucking
| awful.
| dijit wrote:
| There are a cohort of people who abhor touchscreens for typing
| but there currently exists nothing that caters to them.
|
| Everyone making phones caters to the 80% case, there are
| economic reasons for this (supply chain runoffs, manufacturing
| equipment and software) so making something for the remaining
| 20% cases is increasingly expensive.
|
| To answer your question directly, me (a 31 year old white man
| technologist) and my friend (a 28 year old white man
| technologist)
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| blandflakes wrote:
| Honestly, I find that it works astonishingly poorly.
| Autocorrect is often wrong, sometimes showing the right thing
| milliseconds before second-guessing itself into a totally wrong
| word, so now I'm having to backspace because for some reason
| typing the actual letters I want is bad user interface.
|
| Agreed regarding target audience, though.
| antibuddy wrote:
| I have a hybrid experience where I really need swipe to get
| things done fast, but I always disable autocorrect, because
| when I actually type I don't like to be corrected. This way I
| can put the anger on me rather than the software.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I'm the same way. Nothing makes me want to throw a device
| through the wall like it autocorrecting me in a way I don't
| want. this is actually a reason I still use android phones
| even though I agree iphone probably has better security
| anotheryou wrote:
| Apple? My swiftkey on android is sooo much better.
| SamBam wrote:
| I used Swype for a long time and loved it.
|
| Then it was killed, and Android shipped its default
| keyboard ("gboard") with one that included swiping. I've
| used it ever since, not thinking about it, but it has
| _never_ been as good as Swype, and about 20% of my words
| are errors. I don 't think about it much because their
| autocorrect suggestions are pretty good when you tap on a
| word, but it really is annoying. Honestly, it's insane that
| I keep swiping because it would be faster just to type than
| to swipe and correct every fifth word.
|
| I have now downloaded Swiftkey. We'll see if it's any
| better. My first gripe is that the backspace key doesn't
| delete a whole word, which, when you're swiping, seems
| natural to me (either the whole word is right or it's not),
| but I'm sure there are settings and improvements I can make
| as I get used to it.
|
| (Edit: The translate as you type feature is a perhaps-niche
| but killer feature for me. I often have to write to people
| in my poor Spanish, and always had to go back and forth
| between the Translate app and the app I was writing it.
| Doing it as I type is amazing.)
| smichel17 wrote:
| Swype was killed? I still have and use it. It came
| preinstalled on my Galaxy S6.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| It was killed from the app store. Maybe it's still
| available to OEMs to preinstall on their devices.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17030216/nuance-
| discontin...
| LilBytes wrote:
| Swype or at least the functionality behind it still
| exists with Swiftkey on Android.
| stevehawk wrote:
| Apple swipe is f'n horrible. I've disabled every
| autocorrect I can and it still goes back and will change
| _previous_ words to the word I 've typed when it decides I
| don't know what the hell I'm typing.
| flatline wrote:
| I turned off autocorrect years ago and never looked back.
| Sometimes I misspell a word but it's better than typing a
| word slightly wrong and having a completely different word
| pop out. I'll still use autocomplete sometimes to save some
| typing.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Think thin-client. I do on-call duty often, having entire
| smartphone screen available for terminal/remote desktop plus hw
| keyboard is priceless. No need to carry a laptop everywhere I
| go, esp. outdoor and during trips.
|
| My current emergency set: stock Android phone (with OTG),
| Termux, VPN client, RDP client, cheap lap phone stand with USB
| keyboard which I keep in my car. I also keep my own jumpbox
| servers with software required by employer/customer, which is
| not easily installable on phone without quirks.
|
| My todo: check some Dex dongle with HDMI to use hotel TV as
| external screen; figure out if I can cast phone screen onto
| car's screen with Mirrorlink.
| mulletbum wrote:
| I honestly found keyboards like this cumbersome because I can
| only use two fingers. I thought that was there reason we got
| away from them in the first place? Then haptic feedback made it
| so touching the screen feels better, but the original iPhone
| showed you didn't need a keyboard. I am so confused on who
| would buy this device.
| mlatu wrote:
| > Then haptic feedback made it so touching the screen feels
| better
|
| ACTUAL MECHANICAL HAPTICS
|
| vs
|
| vibrating-slab-of-glass
|
| vs
|
| non-vibrating-slab-of-glass
|
| _cough_ yeah, have fun with your glass bricks
| GrinningFool wrote:
| Once 'haptic' found its way into phone marketing, 'a slab
| of glass that vibrates when you touch it' quickly
| supplanted any more complete definition of the word in this
| context.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >I thought that was there reason we got away from them in the
| first place?
|
| Yes, and that reason was "Apple did it and everyone else
| imitated them." There were other reasons too, having a
| keyboard on the phone itself like a Blackberry took up
| valuable screen real estate, and slide-outs made the phone
| ticker (when all manufacturers were crazy about making them
| thinner and thinner) and adds a mechanical point of failure.
| But other than that, it was largely trend-chasing.
| PH01 wrote:
| What is your baseline for how good swipe typing is?
|
| Pre-smartphone plenty of people touch typed text messages. No
| need to be staring at the screen. Stealth messages could be
| sent without taking the phone out of your pocket.
|
| Physical keyboards probably appear to a significant section of
| people who would like to use their phone as a productivity
| device. Surely if swipe typing is so good it would be an option
| in Windows 10?
|
| I agree on the price but I am still considering purchasing this
| phone.
| kroltan wrote:
| > Stealth messages could be sent without taking the phone out
| of your pocket
|
| Remember when phones were predictable enough that you could
| remember where everything was and navigate anywhere through
| memory alone?
|
| Nowadays you need to be very skillful to even open the app
| you meant to, let alone press the right keys on a keyboard.
|
| Heck, sometimes between all of notifications, video overlays,
| recommendations, ads, frequent redesigns, non-deterministic
| search results and whatnot, you might congratulate yourself
| for being able to do the thing you meant to at all!
|
| (And no, I don't have any physical, vision or mental
| impairment, and I have grown up with technology)
| OGWhales wrote:
| I almost never swipe type unless I am in bed with one hand.
| Otherwise, tap typing is what I prefer. I have sort of a
| weird grip but can type at about 80-90wpm on my phone with
| enough accuracy that autocorrect works the majority of the
| time. I can also type reasonably well under my desk without
| looking, but that would be much easier with physical buttons.
|
| Does everyone else swipe type now?
| akalsz wrote:
| > I have sort of a weird grip but can type at about
| 80-90wpm on my phone with enough accuracy that autocorrect
| works the majority of the time.
|
| I'm quite curious about your `weird grip'; 80-90 wpm on a
| touchscreen sounds absurdly fast.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect
| works astonishingly well.
|
| That's great. Meanwhile text input on phones is astonishingly
| frustrating in many other languages; for one because we also
| use english words and expressions in our native language, and
| this alone will already completely derail >90% of text
| correction and completion systems. Now add another "smart
| prediction" layer on top with swipe input and the result
| switches between "decent" and "totally unusable" from one
| sentence to the next.
|
| And without swype I find touchscreen-based text input just as
| frustrating. It's a constant cycle of fixing typos using the
| worst UI possible. We need a "UI dark pattern from hell" award
| just so we can give one to the genius who came up with
| Android's pixel-perfect cursor placement mechanism to select
| text(which Google, for whatever reason, just refuses to fix in
| any way).
| nochowder wrote:
| >What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to?
|
| Sysadmins, hackers, etc. Ever tried "swipe typing coupled with
| autocorrect" in an SSH session?
| tifadg1 wrote:
| I just wonder how practical it really is to do any kind of
| meaningful sysadmin work on a phone. Yeah you can ssh and
| type long commands better, but if you're in an enterprise
| setting you have to vpn in, then connect to a jump server so
| you have ssh aliases and pki certs. Or have them ready on
| your phone, but how do you keep it up to date? What about
| auxiliary programs that are needed to make better decisions
| once ssh is established (monitoring)?..
|
| I'm saying maybe it's legit, maybe I'm just oldfashioned.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, but then I hope their OS is super optimized and runs
| like a demon on the Snapdragon 662. Most likely, if it's
| Android, at some point it will lag even while typing using
| that physical keyboard.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| It's running Lineage OS which is pretty close to stock
| Android sans a lot of the invasive Google telemetry so it
| will probably run smoother than you would expect given the
| specs.
| andagainagain wrote:
| swipe typing is great until you fudge it just a little bit.
| Then it gets hilarious horrible really fast.
| BossingAround wrote:
| > What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to?
|
| I definitely welcome this. Swipe typing has been completely
| unusable for me, personally (I must be doing it wrong, Galaxy
| S10) and the display registers so many typos when I type that I
| often break out the whole laptop to type a simple whatsapp
| message.
|
| The price is steep; if the phone is good though, it definitely
| interests me.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Whoa... maybe it's the jenky touchwiz software Samsung
| bundles on galaxies (if that's still the case?). Try
| installing the default google keyboard and setting it as
| default. Back when I used android, the Google keyboard swipe
| capability was solid, this was on an LG G6 with some
| debloated vanilla android rom.
|
| Although I have to say, moving back to iOS has been pretty
| amazing. Swiping on the normal iOS keyboard allowed me to
| type this entire message from bed with one hand... barely any
| autocorrect kicked in...
| shard wrote:
| Different software keyboards definitely have different
| swiping requirements. I've found that Samsung swiping
| keyboards need sharper angles at direction changes to help
| with recognition. Other swiping keyboards are more okay
| with smooth continuous curves.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| First of all, there are other languages than English.
|
| Some of them are programming languages.
|
| Also a touchscreen can not be operated with sweaty fingers or
| slightly unusual conditions.
|
| No they really can not be reliably used, recent years'
| improvements notwithstanding.
|
| If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in the
| cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands, I'd appreciate a
| 100% physical keyboard controllable one.
|
| Touchscreens are handy though as an auxiliary control in the
| ideal circumstances.
| Loughla wrote:
| >Some of them are programming languages.
|
| Are you doing programming on your smartphone?
|
| I agree with the rest - sweaty fingers or wet fingers in
| general, or god forbid you want to wear gloves where it's
| cold.
|
| But programming on a smartphone?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| When I had a Nokia N900, I programmed on the device all the
| time. Nothing especially big, of course, but the
| traditional-Linux environment and physical keyboard on that
| phone allowed you to quickly knock out a small shell or
| Python script if you had some task you wanted to automate.
| wffurr wrote:
| I don't know about programming but I have definitely used a
| remote shell session from my phone while on the subway.
|
| Can't now because my device doesn't have sufficient access,
| but I used to have VPN on it.
| danans wrote:
| > I have definitely used a remote shell session from my
| phone while on the subway.
|
| Out of necessity or just for fun/curiosity?
| wffurr wrote:
| It was for work but mostly to see if I could. I got a
| code review approval email while commuting and logged in
| to submit.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I have SSHed into a remote server from my phone out of
| necessity many, many times. When you get that e-mail on
| debian-security-announce that some package on one of your
| servers has just received a security update to fix some
| serious vulnerability, then ideally you install that
| update and reload the service right away, instead of
| putting it off for later.
| danans wrote:
| Is this for a personal server or for a server that is
| being used by a paying client? If the latter, doesn't it
| make sense to have an oncall rotation with someone else
| on your team?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Personal servers.
| swebs wrote:
| >Are you doing programming on your smartphone?
|
| No, mostly because it lacks a physical keyboard.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in
| the cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands
|
| Man, we have very different lifestyles. Are you a serial
| killer? :)
|
| > Some of them are programming languages
|
| You're the first person I've known who programs on phone
| hardware rather than using a larger computer with emulators.
| It must be quite painful for you!
| macksd wrote:
| > Man, we have very different lifestyles. Are you a serial
| killer? :)
|
| It wasn't an emergency, but I've certainly wanted to use my
| phone recently while outside shoveling after a blizzard,
| with hands that are simultaneously cold, wet and sweaty.
| Heck, I can hardly use my phone when I'm done at the gym.
| And one doesn't have to be a serial killer to get blood on
| their hands in say, a fall while hiking, a crash while
| biking, or when dialing 911 while rendering aid to someone
| else whose blood is now on your hands.
|
| There are 2 types of people in this world: people who would
| like a phone to work at such times, and people who feel
| like they have to do things like panic-buy toilet paper
| during a pandemic.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Preparing for those situations isn't stupid, similarly
| using seatbelts and creating backups is usually a good
| idea. Sure, you can go without and you'll be fine...until
| you're not. And then you'll be glad for every little
| measure you took beforehand.
|
| You don't need to write code on your phone? Me neither. But
| if some server suddenly starts acting weird while I'm on a
| roadtrip and everything I have is a smartphone, I sure as
| hell would not enjoy the typical SSH session using swype
| and autocorrect.
| danans wrote:
| > But if some server suddenly starts acting weird while
| I'm on a roadtrip.
|
| This sort of example always strikes me as odd because it
| seems far better to have a an oncall rotation for this
| sort of thing.
|
| Granted that nobody has this for their personal servers,
| but that by definition is not an emergency.
|
| However, if it's for a service you are providing to a
| paying client, I'd hope they aren't relying on a server
| being reset by a single individual who might be on a road
| trip.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I guess someone has never been in a car crash. Or had to
| fix a problem on the train home after leaving work. Must be
| nice.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Emergency mode on an iPhone is activated with physical
| buttons. If I'm on the train leaving work, I have my
| laptop in my bag...
|
| This device is really interesting, but I agree that the
| product market fit is slim.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I can tell you from several unfortunate emergency
| experiences that you don't just call 911. In fact if you
| are the one in the accident, it's often the case that
| someone else calls 911 before you find your phone. What
| you do is call or text your family/coworkers/significant
| other/etc. I mean I won't buy a phone just for this use
| case, but someone who routinely works in harsh
| environments might.
|
| As far as programming on the phone, I used to leave my
| computer at work and have a computer at home. On the
| commute I would only have my phone. If I am at the
| grocery store and the client calls and says their server
| is acting funny, I might not want to wait to SSH to it
| from home or run to the office.
|
| I think this is all a moot point in that you are right:
| at this point most people don't have the need for a
| physical keyboard. But at the same time, I think some
| small subset of people will want a physical keyboard.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Most people carry around several liters of blood inside
| them. It's surprisingly easy to get some out, even by
| accident.
|
| While it is undeniably more comfortable to program with a
| nice keyboard and big monitor, emergencies can demand that
| you work with what you have. Typing
|
| cat /tmp/accumulatedfiles | while read line ; do sed -i
| '/inner\;/outer\;/' < $line ; done
|
| can be rather frustrating without a real keyboard.
| spurgu wrote:
| Yup, I've had to troubleshoot servers over SSH on Android
| more times than I care to count and it's _time
| consuming_. Due to this I often bring my backpack with
| laptop _just in case_. With a daily driver like this with
| a physical keyboard I wouldn 't have to bother.
|
| The size of this (as well as the Astro Slide[0]) deters
| me from buying though. Well COVID as well since I'm not
| on the move as much as I used to. But size-wise it's just
| too big, a phone this size doesn't comfortably fit in my
| pocket. Wish someone made something N900-sized (but
| lighter and thinner). The large size is great when used
| in computer mode, but most of the time you're using it in
| phone mode so I'd prefer to have it smaller.
|
| [0] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-
| slide-5g-transforme...
| arghwhat wrote:
| > Most people carry around several liters of blood inside
| them.
|
| Emphasis on "most".
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I really worry about the exceptions to that.
| shard wrote:
| Only on HN would I be incentivized to Google "amount of
| blood in a baby". It turns out babies have about 75mL of
| blood per kg, so an 8 pound baby would have about 270 mL
| of blood. Infants/toddlers up to ~29lbs (between 2~4
| years old) will have less than a liter of blood.
| tubularhells wrote:
| Imagine a world where some people speak more than one language
| on a daily basis.
|
| Wild, I know.
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| I often have a shell open on my phone, but far less often than
| I would if there were good options for typing. I'm very excited
| by the prospect.
| spazx wrote:
| I'm 25 - I loved qwerty physical keyboards on those "texting
| phones" from the late 2000s. The Sidekick, the enV, the Octane,
| etc. To me, as a kid, it looked like a small laptop, and I
| wanted to run real applications on it and use the web. I was
| very fast on that little keyboard, too. When I got my first
| smartphone, it took me awhile to get used to it. I can't type
| without the tactile feedback, and I don't like using the
| terminal on a touch keyboard. Adding that I'm a nerd for pocket
| computers in general, I guess I'm the target audience.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Most of what I wrote makes no sense. The previous sentence has
| only one to be to get the just.
|
| I swiped the above and you can see the results.
| ilovetux wrote:
| I have been waiting for a phone like this since I had a Samsung
| Captivate Glide [0] in 2011. The fact that it can come with
| Linux preinstalled is a huge bonus for me.
|
| I can't really say why I like typing on a physical keyboard,
| but not losing half of your screen to a virtual keyboard and
| also having access to modifier keys like shift, ctrl and alt
| are the top two reasons I prefer having the physical keyboard.
| Also it slides out so you only need to use it when it will
| help.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Captivate_Glide
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| > born and raised touching the screen
|
| What does this have to do with the market? People don't want
| physical keyboards because they are "used to" them. They want
| because the experience of typing is different.
| ansible wrote:
| I would have bought this style of phone 8 or 9 years ago. I
| had the original G1 (actually the ADP1) and Samsung Sidekick
| 4G, and _loved_ the keyboards on those phones. With some
| practice, I could get close to 30 wpm on the keyboards.
|
| Since those phones were current though, I've needed to switch
| to "normal" smartphones without physical keyboards. At first
| I really disliked them, but with practice, and especially
| with better swipe-capable keyboards, I got used to it.
|
| Now, I don't know that I'd worry about going back. I'd rather
| have a phone with long-term software support.
| solatic wrote:
| I bought a Pro1, their first-gen model. Termux had packages for
| both vim, kubectl, and the Teleport client binary (tsh).
| Unfortunately, it didn't work because Termux refused (refuses?)
| to run within the Android work profile, but if it did, it would
| have permitted running kubectl commands - checking status,
| restarting deployments, scaling deployments, etc., all from the
| phone in your pocket.
|
| Running kubectl edit and then using vim from a physical
| keyboard is very doable. Trying to do it from a touch keyboard
| is a nightmare.
| crocsarecool wrote:
| I've actually heard people with certain handicaps find they can
| type better with the physical keyboard. I'm not sure what those
| handicaps are - I read it a long time ago. I think one thing
| may have been poor eyesight and being able to feel the keys
| helped aid them.
| tyfon wrote:
| It targets me since my hands are way too fat and I need to type
| Norwegian. None of the keyboards from apple (who doesn't even
| have swipe in Norwegian), google or microsoft supports compound
| words.
|
| Combine that with my fat fingers that generally press 3-4 keys
| on my iphone at the same time I have to spend a lot of time
| erasing what I just wrote. A physical slide out keyboard would
| be great.
| legohead wrote:
| I used swype up to a few years ago, and now I use speech to
| text all the time. It isn't perfect, and for some reason loves
| to confuse pronouns (I becomes HE, why Google?). But it's ease
| of use and speed is unmatched.
|
| Typing on a physical keyboard feels like going back a couple
| steps. I would like actual buttons on the phone though - for
| gaming. And maybe a little touchpad? That's what I'd put on a
| pull out pad. Now the problem becomes getting support for those
| things...
| dmos62 wrote:
| > For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect
| works astonishingly well.
|
| Yes! I love it. But when I'm typing in a morphologically
| complex language that has poor autocorrect coverage (dictionary
| too small), swipe typing is unpleasant. I hate swipe-less touch
| typing. Keyboard is right up my alley (though I'd love to see
| improvements in non-English autocorrect more).
| oblio wrote:
| > So who's the target for this 900 usd device?
|
| The cynic in me says: No one. Or as close to no one as
| possible: too few people. And too fickle people (enthusiasts
| are notorious for being fickle and changing their minds about
| tech every 5 minutes). We just won't notice anything as this
| product dies a silent death, a few months from now.
| rainingmonkey wrote:
| Everyone who remembers how much better phones with slide-out
| keyboards were.
|
| Commenters here seem to be focusing on the available OSes, but
| most flagship phones from a few years ago without a locked
| bootloader will run Lineage or Uubuntu Touch. FXtec's offering
| here is just that the bootloader won't be uncooperative.
|
| The real killer feature is the keyboard. Those questioning the
| utility of a slide-out keyboard on a phone have obviously never
| used one. The speed and precision possible is miles ahead of an
| on-screen keyboard, plus there's all the extra screen real
| estate. While you can't touch type in the classic 4-fingers-on-
| home-row way, you certainly can learn to 'touch type' with your
| thumbs. Those who want proper touch typing can sit down in
| front of a Gemini, a slide-out keyboard excels at blasting out
| messages while standing on the metro.
|
| There are plenty of us still holding onto our Motorola Photons
| and Droids (now so old the hardware is beginning to fail),
| blackberries (permanently locked bootloader) and Geminis (not a
| real phone, clamshell keyboard). For us, this is as close to
| the dream phone we've been waiting for as we'll likely ever
| see.
|
| > swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly
| well Last I checked, AnySoftKeyboard had the only FOSS
| implementation of swipe typing, and it wasn't very good. All
| the providers of decent swiping keyboards have a profit
| incentive to mine your data, and a keyboard that leaks
| information makes any other protections redundant.
| uranium wrote:
| This. I haven't seen a good phone with a 5-row keyboard since
| my first android phone, a G-1. Having that fifth row means
| that all the punctuation goes where you expect it to be, and
| you don't have to learn another key layout. I've been making
| do with swiping text since about 4 phones ago, but it makes
| typing on a phone painful and about 10x slower. So far I've
| had to correct about 3 words per sentence. I can't wait to be
| able to order this phone!
| Snitch-Thursday wrote:
| G1, G2, Droid, Droid 2, Droid 4, Photon Q, Dell Venue Pro
| (windows phone), Priv, Pro1.
|
| The road for keyboard phones is long and winding.
|
| The portrait sliders like Dell Venue Pro and BB Priv are
| the best IMHO. With glossy silver metal sides to protect
| the screen, mmmm.
| abcanthur wrote:
| I have long yearned for the sliding keyboards of yore; better
| touch typing, adds some articulation and yes, size, to phones
| that are too small and smooth for many hands, all while
| preserving screen real estate from onscreen keyboards AND
| visual obstruction from our moving fingers. To this last
| point, I have given up on physical keyboards returning to
| phones, but why can't we have a physical scroll wheel on the
| side? Handles so many use screentime use cases (infinite
| scroll...), unobstrusive, precise, piggybacks on
| accessibility UIs, etc. Early ipods were all scroll wheel,
| and there is great versatility in the clicking and smooth-vs-
| stepped modes of modern mouse scroll wheels. If we haven't
| gotten a decent keyboard in any device for years, at least
| give us a wheel!! Touch screens are like wearing cheap
| cellophane gloves, this is why nobody looks cool while using
| their smartphone, because there is no possibility of
| virtuosity in the dead, time lagged UI.
| [deleted]
| s_fischer wrote:
| They probably aren't the designed target market but I wonder if
| a physical keyboard would be easier to use for the vision
| impaired. Especially with the ridges on the home keys, they
| could rely less on the audio feedback experience of glass
| screen keyboards
| [deleted]
| maxsilver wrote:
| You can have both, with no drawbacks.
|
| My favourite phone ever designed was the BlackBerry Priv. It
| was an Android-based smartphone with a full-sized (5.4in)
| touchscreen, an completely-hidden slide-out physical keyboard,
| that also doubled as a touch-sensitive pad.
|
| You could "swipe" (touchscreen-style) over the keys, and then
| press down on those same physical keys simultaneously. But you
| could also slide it back into the phone, and use it just like
| any other iPhone or Android ever made.
|
| It's the best of both worlds, really.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, plus not losing 1/2 the screen to an on-screen keyboard.
|
| Was almost pure android, incredibly secure. Blackberry got it
| right, then bailed.
| rchaud wrote:
| The phone had a lot of complaints about getting hot while
| in use. The camera was also quite poor, which in 2015 was a
| dealbreaker.
|
| I did run into someone using it though, and when I asked
| him how he liked it, he said it was great. The keyboard was
| more important to him than anything else.
| studog wrote:
| Ex-Blackberry here. BB didn't bail; not enough people were
| buying the phones for hardware manufacturing to be self-
| sustainable.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, but, you cannot build a new brand in a couple of
| years. If you look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see
| the Priv, the first all android Blackberry, was released
| in 2015, and they bailed in late 2016.
|
| You cannot re-invent a brand in a bit more than a year.
| They should have expected years to see significant
| adoption.
|
| Worse, the people who trusted Blackberry, often didn't
| want a Chinese company making their hardware.
|
| Sad really.
| bbarnett wrote:
| What really got me, was how much people I showed the Priv
| to, and the slide out keyboard loved it.
|
| An example, I was on a plane. Guy next to me, a Canadian,
| had never heard of or seen the Priv, and had a Samsung.
|
| When he saw me scrolling a webpage up and down with the
| touchpad/hardware keyboard, use it for gestures, then
| type with swipe completion via the hardware keyboard,
| _and_ keep a full screen, he immediately wanted one.
|
| I had to tell him the last security update was 2 months
| ago, and it looked like the end of line.
|
| How many people didn't even know? I wonder that, to this
| day.
|
| Further to that, phone purchase cycles are often 3 or 4
| years. They gave it no chance IMO.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > 2015
|
| iPhone happened 2007, Android, 2008. Their "people love
| our software never hardware" self deception had
| completely wiped positive brand values by that point,
| along with trust from the market towards mobile hardware
| keyboard, because BB engaged anyone getting close to
| their level of sophistication in the technology,
| rendering competitors' implementations inconsistent and
| lackluster as the result.
|
| I still don't fully understand serial suicides in phone
| market 2007-2012, it was strange times. Lots of companies
| were politely asked to finish their free lunch session
| and most decided to burn their retirement instead of
| accepting it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I think, in a market like this, if a new type of product
| appears, and starts gaining massive traction?
|
| The CEO, the board, the top execs, marketing, etc, need
| to force use that product exclusively. So they know. So
| they get it.
|
| Because it seemed like many floundered by not
| understanding the differences, what was important.
|
| RIM could have done so much, but they didn't even get it,
| or seem to understand why people were bailing.
|
| Where was RIM's board? CEO replacement took too long too.
|
| Ah well.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| My KeyOne is actually _better_ due to losing half the
| screen - I remember trying to open a webpage and a notes
| app and type in some notes from the page. My Oneplus 3,
| whenever I pulled up the keyboard, would shift everything
| up, making it impossible to see what I had focused on. My
| KeyOne never shifted the view though, because the keyboard
| was already there.
|
| Even better is the effect this has on battery life. The
| screen is the biggest battery drain on nearly every phone,
| and so having a little less means my phone lasts all
| weekend on a single charge. Because I don't watch video on
| my phone (or read the bottom half of the screen) anyways,
| there's really no drawback for me to "losing" a third of my
| screen, only benefits
| bbarnett wrote:
| My comment was about how on-screen, software keyboards
| eat 1/2 the active screen.
|
| The Priv had a slide out hardware keyboard, the optimal
| solution IMO. Full size screen on the device, hardware
| keyboard too.
|
| I know what you mean, but the keyone didn't lose 1/2 its
| screen, to lose something, you have to have it first. If
| it lost 1/2 its screen, it would end up with 1/4 of
| phone's length with usable screen.
|
| Agree with all you said about software keyboards.
| NathanielK wrote:
| BlackBerry's keyboard software is excellent too. I use
| BlackBerry Keyboard[1] on my compact Xperia. The auto-
| suggests appear on the keys themselves. This saves valuable
| real-estate compared to having an extra row of words above
| the keyboard.
|
| Sadly BlackBerry haven't released new hardware for ~3 years
| and their software is barely on life support. A shame since
| they have a knack for functional design.
|
| [1]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blackber
| ry...
| aembleton wrote:
| I was going to try that keyboard out but it isn't
| compatible with my phone (Android 10). Not sure why.
| NathanielK wrote:
| BlackBerry only lets BlackBerry hardware install it from
| the playstore. BlackBerry Manager[1] was an MIT licensed
| program that let you patch and install on unauthorized
| devices. Sadly, it looks like repository was deleted in
| the last few months(DMCA?). Silly considering they
| haven't released any Android 10 devices.
|
| Maybe there's still BlackBerry Manager apks around. I'd
| recommend trying it out, it's still an excellent typing
| experience. Haven't found anything to replace it yet.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201121204253/https://gi
| thub.co...
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| If typing on a screen was really as enjoyable and productive as
| a keyboard, we wouldn't see the enormous collapse in long-form
| text blogging over the last decade in favor of just uploading
| images with a much smaller amount of text.
|
| Physical keyboards appeal to, besides those who just like to
| write a lot of text, also people who often need to SSH into a
| server and enter extended characters, or who run Emacs on their
| phone and want to easily use the power of packages like org-
| mode.
| rchaud wrote:
| Probably the people that bought the previous Android iteration
| of this, the FxTec Pro 1 from 2019.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| This targets me exactly! Well, sort of. The original Moto Droid
| was my first Android device, and I loved the slide out physical
| keyboard (paired with SwiftKey prediction and autocorrect!). It
| was the best of both worlds. I miss that typing experience.
|
| This phone looks perfect! Up until I saw the processor. A
| snapdragon 662 sounds like it would be a step back in time.
|
| So I guess I'm on the jaded list. My dream phone would have a
| landscape physical keyboard and a Samsung/Wacom pressure
| sensitive stylus. All with a flagship quality CPU/GPU. I could
| care less about multiple camera lenses. Anyways, never gonna
| happen.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Yeah, no idea how that happened. 662 is an early 2020 11nm
| midrange SoC. For comparison the 1.5 year older Apple A12 is
| twice as fast. Considering the price point I'd rather pay an
| extra 200 dollars and buy a 7" One Mix laptop.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I miss my Droid keyboard. It was so much more convenient than
| the current screen keyboards, even with swipe. Swipe + auto-
| correct gets every 3rd word wrong for me.
| Yizahi wrote:
| I have yet to see an even half working autocorrect on phone
| (even in English). I'm using Samsung S10P and when typing
| autocorrect can't correct even a simple 1 character typos (e.g.
| "cha4acter" or "5ypo"). Also trying to put a cursor in the
| desired place happens usually only after several tries.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| For the cursor part, most keyboard allow precise cursor
| movements by swiping the space bar.
| goodusername wrote:
| Wow,i never realized you could do that, such a game
| changer! Thanks for the tip.
| acd wrote:
| Happy there are more Linux phones on the market. When there is a
| good premium Linux phone with open boot loader I will buy one.
| Smartphones are really small computers and we should be able to
| run whatever operating system one wants on them. Freedom as free
| choice of os.
| growt wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks that "finger model" on the
| landingpage is a poor choice? It looks like you couldn't even use
| the device with those nails.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| No, it's a fine choice. If you can use it with those nails,
| then most people can use it. And with long acrylics, where
| there's a will, there's usually a way.
| nabakin wrote:
| The promo video barely showed someone actually using the
| keyboard too. From what they did show, it looked cheap.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Yeah, with nails that long that keyboard would be borderline
| unusable. You'd need a keyboard with near-zero travel because
| you can't apply much force to the tips, and the layout of that
| keyboard is too dense to use the flat part of your nails or
| your fingertips.
|
| A touchscreen is not very hard to operate, at least, but it's
| still a bit more difficult and I think having the keyboard out
| would also make the touchscreen unusable with long nails.
|
| Probably not a big concern for their target audience, but
| definitely a problem for me.
| als0 wrote:
| https://vimeo.com/471380106#t=105s
|
| The moment when the woman tries to multitask Excel and Slack at
| the same time is hard to take seriously!
| simplyaccont wrote:
| It's all nice and stuff, but does it support VoLTE ? With
| impending shutdown of 3G networks in USA next year, without
| VoLTE, you can't really use phone part of the smartphone
| commandnotfound wrote:
| Disabling the 3G network doesn't mean they are going to disable
| the older 2G networks that are widely used to make calls even
| if connected through LTE. Here (Czech Republic) the 3G network
| was disabled today and the phone part of my phone works even
| though VoLTE is not being used.
| simplyaccont wrote:
| 2G networks are already down here. Operators won't activate
| phones that do not support VoLTE and sending emails for past
| year+ warning of shutdown of 3G network
| Wildgoose wrote:
| I have another British 'phone with a better keyboard on order for
| delivery starting in June: The Astro Slide 5G from Planet
| Computers: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-
| slide-5g-transforme...
|
| I bought their Gemini offering which is a great PDA but not so
| good as a mobile phone. Their new offering promises to provide a
| solution for both.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Yep, I'm in the Astro early bird group, too. Looking forward to
| trying it out; I haven't used the Gemini or Cosmo, so I ain't
| really sure what to expect, but it looks nice enough.
| undecisive wrote:
| I'm also looking forward to the Slide. Interesting to note that
| even with all the kerfuffle surrounding their processor
| "downgrade" during production, the Astro Slide should be a bit
| more powerful [1]
|
| Hopefully it will land sooner too...
|
| [1] https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-
| snapdragon-66...
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| I used to use a Motorola Milestone/Droid. It was great, I really
| loved the slideout keyboard and could touch type on it. Even with
| just two fingers actively in use, it felt great. Also being able
| to type something in landscape mode while still being able to see
| anything but the textbox and keyboard was phenomenal.
|
| All of that said, typing on a touch screen is fine and I don't
| think I'm willing to pay the premium for such a device anymore.
| smashah wrote:
| can't wait for when they come out with a N900/N810 style
| keyboard!
| Causality1 wrote:
| I feel like there's not going to be a lot of overlap between
| people who want physical keyboards and people who like curved
| screens.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| I see positive comments about the keyboard, but is it really a
| good UX to type on such a small keyboard? I mean, when you use
| your laptop, pretty much all of your fingers are involved in the
| process of typing, whereas if the same keyboard is part of a
| mobile phone, you only use your thumbs, which is the opposite of
| how qwerty keyboards supposed to be used. It feels like the idea
| of a full-blown keyboard on a mobile phone sounds cool, but when
| it comes to practice, must be a complete misuse of a technology.
| It's like if smartwatches were made with 8K display - sounds
| cool, but how practical it really is?
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| The keyboard is actually a little bit too big for most hands,
| but I have been using this device for about 2 years now and
| generally it is a dream to type on. It took about a month to
| get comfortable with the layout but I can thumb type without
| looking at the phone. I have never owned a pure-touch based
| phone so I can't really compare to the modern touchscreen
| experience though.
| chaorace wrote:
| I think the main advantage is blind typing. No amount of muscle
| memory can trump the tactile feedback of raised keys and home-
| row notches. When you're forced to rely on sight, you make more
| errors and are limited to using just one finger at a time (
| _because your eyes can only focus on one spot at once_ ).
|
| With that being said, I _can_ blind type on my smartphone, just
| not with a QWERTY IME. I instead use a 4x4 grid-layout
| (MessagEase [1]) that 's large enough to consistently hit the
| correct zones without any visual feedback.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagEase
| tetris11 wrote:
| instant haptic feedback, nothing better than that
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| A physical keyboard is better than that. Touch keyboards
| are garbage. It's why the Apple Touch Bar is garbage.
| Physical keys don't activate if your finger slightly grazes
| them.
| stinos wrote:
| _and are limited to using just one finger at a time (because
| your eyes can only focus on one spot at once)._
|
| That isn't entirely accurate. It's not because you focus at
| point x, that another finger cannot be moving at x + y cm and
| perform the correct action there. I never learned to type
| blindly. Or at least not in the way this is normally done.
| However I do have enough muscle memory by now that I can look
| down at the keyboard, put a couple of fingers in what roughly
| looks like the right spot and then start typing away with
| multiple fingers, from time to time laying focus in the
| center of the keyboard only.
| andagainagain wrote:
| It is indeed faster and more accurate to use physical keys on a
| smaller device.
|
| The competition is the exact same thing btw, with less screen
| and tactile feedback. Both will give you text thumb repetitive
| stress problems, but doing that on a hard screen will more so.
| Remember, this isn't theoretical, we used to use these all the
| time.
|
| The drawbacks of a physical keyboard are in things like
| flexibility (you can't easily remap or change the size of the
| keys) and thickness.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The n900 had a _tiny_ keyboard. But it was practical to type
| are almost normal keyboard speeds. Unlike on a touch screen,
| where auto correct gets in the way.
| npsimons wrote:
| > where auto correct gets in the way.
|
| Even without autocorrect (say, with Hacker's Keyboard on
| Termux), I still get frustrated by mistyped keys. "Up arrow"
| instead of space in bash, "o" instead of "p" in org-mode
| (with speed-commands).
|
| I miss my N900 physical keyboard.
| zokier wrote:
| N900 benefitted from tinyness, because thumbs could reach all
| keys easily. On modern-sized phone you'd need to stretch far
| more to reach the middle with thumbs
| _nalply wrote:
| Some handicapped people, like my wife, need a physical
| keyboard. My wife is happy with the keyboard in Blackberry
| Key2.
| brazzy wrote:
| It's worlds better than using a touchscreen keyboard, at any
| rate. I find those absolutely horrible to use and will buy
| phones with a phsyical keyboard as long as they are available.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| See historical: Danger Hiptop, aka Sidekick
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop
| fragile_frogs wrote:
| I don't know how this keyboard will perform but I use the
| BlackBerry Key2 as my daily driver and typing on the keyboard
| is such a satisfying feeling for me, I don't really think I am
| more accurate or faster though.
|
| Added benefit of having a physical keyboard is having
| shortcuts.
| [deleted]
| dbeley wrote:
| It doesn't give you as much control as a Pinephone or a Purism
| smartphone, as it relies on a ton of proprietary blob that will
| never reach Linux mainline.
| swiley wrote:
| This easy to tell, if it has a Qualcomm SoC in it chances are
| you won't be able to run a reasonable OS on it.
| developer92 wrote:
| The first consumer smartphone to run lineage out of the box is a
| bogus claim. I personally owned a whileyfox for some years which
| I bought only because of that.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I type so incredibly fast on an iPhone keyboard that I have a
| hard time understanding the appeal of a (physical) tiny little
| keyboard like this.
| topspin wrote:
| I mostly just speak to my Android. The speech recognition is so
| good now I rarely have to "type" anything.
| _nalply wrote:
| I would buy a Linux smartphone with a Blackberry style keyboard
| (this means no fiddly slideouts) for my handicapped wife as long
| as Android apps can be made to work, by sideloading, emulating or
| whatever.
| robert_foss wrote:
| Seems pretty cool. This SOC is bound to have pretty good upstream
| linux support to, since the Snapdragon 660 is in very good shape.
| floatboth wrote:
| The 662 is much newer (what a weird numbering scheme...) so
| there's probably many differences to the 660..
| robert_foss wrote:
| It is likely based on an older silicon base design.
| Snapdragon 662 seems to have the internal Qcom id sm6115[1].
| Being based on linux v4.19[2] also seems to point in this
| direction. Another hint is it shipping the same CPU core
| versions as the 660.
|
| It seems to be a 11nm part as opposed to the 660 which is a
| 14nm part.
|
| This all being said, it won't be plug & play with upstream
| linux today. But probably soon enough. This project likely is
| based on Qcom downstream kernels for the moment.
|
| [1] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/qualcomm/snapdragon_600/662
|
| [2] https://github.com/moto-sm6115/kernel_motorola_bengalito
| _thejrk wrote:
| HTC Apache was the last phone I used w/ a full keyboard. I've
| wished several times I had a full keyboard on my phone.
| jimmyblanco wrote:
| Which CPU is shipped in this phone?
|
| https://www.fxtec.com/index says: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 MSM8998
|
| however, https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x says: Qualcomm Snapdragon
| 662
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Pro^1 X? What kind of name is that? That's like calling a sports
| car the Sport^GT R
| jjgreen wrote:
| ... or a programming language C#
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| It's a sad fact of life that if you want a good phone that will
| age okay, and be supported for at least a few years with
| OS/security updates, and will have decent customer support if you
| run into issues, you're just gonna have to get a phone from one
| of the big guys.
|
| Making a phone is hard. Every time I see one of these niche
| phones that tries to appeal to a crowd with offers of "privacy"
| or "user control" I think it's neat and it would be nice if it
| was realistic. But it's just gonna be another poorly-supported
| phone, offered by a small company that doesn't have resources to
| handle the inevitable complications of selling a smartphone, and
| where you have the option of being either in:
|
| * Google's privacy nightmare Android ecosystem
|
| * Un-Googled Android where you can't use the Play Store and a
| bunch of apps you'd want to use don't work
|
| * Some kind of Linux distro for phones that will probably have an
| even worse app ecosystem than the previous option
| varispeed wrote:
| I never needed customer support for a phone and never done any
| updates (I have not updated my phone for like 3 years, because
| I know the next update disables call recording).
|
| I'd love a phone with good specs, as many open parts as
| possible and with all schematics and BOM so I could fix it
| myself if something goes wrong.
| bradfa wrote:
| I had the secure enclave in my iPhone 8 fail about 6 months
| after I bought it. Solution was to spend about half an hour
| on the phone with Apple while they ran remote diagnostics and
| then take it to an Apple store 30 minutes drive away. 10
| minutes spent with Apple store employee while they ran even
| more diagnostics resulted in them handing me a replacement
| phone and I walked out.
|
| The ability to fairly quickly resolve my hardware problem
| greatly impressed me. I expect I could get a similar level of
| service with a Samsung device at a non-Samsung retailer, or
| if I bought the phone originally through a mobile phone
| operator's storefront and brought it back to the same store
| for warranty, but there's no promise of that.
|
| For something which is critical to the operation of my life,
| I have chosen to compromise on some desires and will likely
| continue to buy iPhones in the future simply because they
| work fairly well and when they don't I can get it fixed
| rather easily and with minimal downtime by Apple itself.
| varispeed wrote:
| I would never give my phone to the support under any
| circumstances. I just don't trust that they'll handle my
| data securely and who knows where my phone will land - some
| subcontractors instead of disposing it could try to
| refurbish. I've seen cases where someone bought a phone
| still with someone's data on it. I look on forums to see
| what kind of problems people have with a particular phone
| and if there is nothing serious, then I consider buying it.
| If something happens to my phone I destroy it myself and
| get a new one.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I have not updated my phone for like 3 years
|
| So you are using an outdated browser with security bugs? Good
| luck with that...
| varispeed wrote:
| I think the browser itself gets updates, but I have not
| updated the OS. I also only visit a handful of websites
| that I trust. If I want to "wander off" then I am using
| Tails on a dedicated computer.
| swiley wrote:
| >* Some kind of Linux distro for phones that will probably have
| an even worse app ecosystem than the previous option
|
| I have a pinephone and it's the first phone I've had with what
| I would consider a decent app ecosystem. All the apps I use on
| my laptop run on it just fine.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| All good points. However, just as an fyi, you can use stuff
| like GApps to use Playstore Apps without having to buy into
| Google's digital anal probing.
| fsflover wrote:
| > It's a sad fact of life that if you want a good phone that
| will age okay, and be supported for at least a few years with
| OS/security updates, and will have decent customer support if
| you run into issues, you're just gonna have to get a phone from
| one of the big guys.
|
| This is not true. Librem 5 will have a lifetime support,
| beating both Google and Apple, because Purism upstreams all
| their drivers to get the main Linux support [0].
|
| Any app from Debian repositories should work (except possibly
| problems with the small screen). Many apps are already
| available [1].
|
| [0] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
|
| [1] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
| bogwog wrote:
| > except possibly problems with the small screen
|
| That's the number 1 problem by far. A lot of programs run on
| it, but that doesn't mean they're usable. Until we start
| seeing responsive linux apps, the linux smartphone is going
| to remain a gimmick.
|
| The only people seemingly interested in tackling this problem
| are Librem and the KDE team (with Plasma Mobile/Kirigami).
| camillomiller wrote:
| I tell you: this is the year of Linux on Smartphones.
|
| jk
| fsflover wrote:
| AFAIK it has proprietary drivers probably preventing future
| updates (like for other Android phones). I prefer Purism Librem 5
| instead, which gives true freedom.
| enriquto wrote:
| Yes, it's really absurd that a niche phone "that gives you
| control" shuts off most of its potential clients by offering
| them a phone based on non-free software that they cannot
| modify.
| gue5t wrote:
| "LINEAGEOS, UBUNTU TOUCH or ANDROID" is a euphemism for "we did
| not do the important, hard work of upstreaming drivers".
|
| This phone might be perfectly nice, but it's a "Linux phone" in a
| marketing sense only; nobody has properly ported Linux to it, and
| you'll be stuck with an ancient kernel full of proprietary
| userspace blobs.
|
| I'd love to hear otherwise, but I've seen this pattern repeat a
| number of times (the Gemini PDA and successors, various "secure"
| phones, essentially all the Ubuntu Touch devices
| https://phone.docs.ubuntu.com/en/devices/devices, etc.) and those
| who do put in the critical driver work are in-touch enough to
| know it's worth being explicit about upfront.
| robert_foss wrote:
| You can't really blame a tiny manufacturer for not having all
| the drivers upstreamed. They probably don't have access to the
| relevant datasheets even if they had the money/time/developers
| to pursue full upstreaming. Upstreaming drivers is the vendors
| responsibility.
| jrwr wrote:
| even the rPi has a bunch of firmware that just is not open
| sourced, they used their own kernel for years because of
| that.
| darau1 wrote:
| I really wish they would just make some keyboard-case-love-child
| for some of the more popular mainstream devices. I really want a
| physical keyboard, but I don't want to give up my daily driver
| for a $900 unknown variable.
| Pxtl wrote:
| They were _supposed_ to. This company was launched on an ill-
| fated Kickstarter for a slide-out keyboard attachment called
| "Livermorium" for the Moto Z. It's the reason I _owned_ a Moto
| Z.
|
| I have no interest in buying a no-name brand phone, though.
| AnssiH wrote:
| I got the Moto Z keyboard attachment, and it was too clunky
| to use compared to e.g. my current Pro1 or whatever I had
| back then (BlackBerry Priv probably).
| corty wrote:
| Problem is, Motorola took its time certifying the keyboard
| and by the time they were done, hardware components where no
| longer available, so they had to redesign. Same thing
| happened again, but they successfully delivered a few
| prototypes. After which Motorola discontinued the attachment
| ports altogether.
|
| So fuck Motorola, never again.
|
| And from what I've seen in the Pro1 (no X), it works pretty
| well, does what it is supposed to. Price could be lower, but
| there is always something.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Okay, the cert delay killing it sucks... but discontinued?
| There were 4 generations of Moto Z with the port. That's a
| long window.
| rchaud wrote:
| Samsung used to make these for their flagships, but stopped
| after the Galaxy S8 in 2017. I had the case for the GS7, it was
| pretty good if expensive at CAD 70.
|
| After 2 years though it started missing keystrokes, and I
| needed to take it off and clip it back on to get it to work.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| The PinePhone will be coming out with a keyboard add-on soon
| _nalply wrote:
| Hopefully not as a slideout. My wife is handicapped and don't
| manage fiddly slideouts. She is happy with Blackberry Key2
| style keyboards.
| nfriedly wrote:
| There's renderings on [1] and [2] and prototype photos on
| [3] and [4] that makes it look like more of a clamshell /
| laptop shape with the phone screen and keyboard folded
| against each other when it's closed. Kind of like a tablet
| with a keyboard case. Apparently the keyboard will also
| have a 22Wh/6000mAh batter in it.
|
| [1]: https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/15/december-update-the-
| longes...
|
| [2]: https://www.pine64.org/2021/01/15/january-update-
| happy-new-g...
|
| [3]: https://www.pine64.org/2021/02/15/february-update-
| show-and-t...
|
| [4]: https://www.pine64.org/2021/03/15/march-update/
|
| Search for "keyboard" or just scroll about halfway down
| each of the pages to see the pictures.
| darau1 wrote:
| That looks rather promising!
| nfriedly wrote:
| I agree! I'd really love a case that added a keyboard, battery,
| MicroSD slot, and a headphones jack!
| takeda wrote:
| I placed an order for their previous model, they assured me that
| I should get it 4 - 8 weeks. After I didn't get anything for 6
| months I messaged them that I want to withdraw my order (the
| phone had already old hardware during release, and it was a year
| old when I ordered it, but at the same time it cost as much as a
| high end phone). I got no response from them. I then contacted my
| credit card company and they charged back.
|
| It sucks, because, I would really love phone with a hardware
| keyboard. I would place an order, but am afraid of the same thing
| happening again.
| usr1106 wrote:
| There is a comment further down saying they received theirs 7
| months after the promised delivery date.
|
| So not a scam, but certainly over-optimistic promises.
| hyko wrote:
| Guess there's always the Gemini - bonus is that it effectively
| has a Psion 5 keyboard
| https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/gemini-pda-1
| ruph123 wrote:
| Or even their next product which looks very promising:
| https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-
| slide-5g-transforme...
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| So a scam, like the Escobar phone[1]?
|
| [1] Marques Brownlee - The Truth About the Escobar Folding
| Phone! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8FJSjy3bXA
|
| [1] Marques Brownlee - Escobar Responds! A PSA
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8ydpZ5-4o
| DreamFlasher wrote:
| They overpromised and communicated horribly. But clearly not
| scam, I'm typing this with my pro1. And in the forum there were
| a bunch of people requesting a refund and reporting that they
| received them quickly.
| vasilakisfil wrote:
| I would like to see the keyboard layout but I can't find any
| photo.
| developer92 wrote:
| There's a photo on the front page...
| vasilakisfil wrote:
| thanks was from mobile and I couldn't see it. Now from
| desktop I can see it.
| Fnoord wrote:
| See [1], source: FTA.
|
| This is the spiritual successor of the Nokia N900, and it isn't
| a very good keyboard (but a better layout than N900). Its
| pretty much a rebrand of the same device with the same name
| from 2019 without the 'X'. Difference is it has better OS
| support (thanks to XDA, I guess), different SOC (recent SD600
| series instead of SD835), and a different colour (blue instead
| of grey).
|
| If you want a very good hardware keyboard use whatever BT or
| USB (such as HHKB) or try one of the Planet devices
| (Gemini/Cosmo/Astro). I own a Cosmo, the keyboard is superb.
| They all have the very same keyboard. Right now, I'd opt for an
| Astro instead of Cosmo. Also slider instead of candybar +
| horizontal flip, and a more recent SOC (D800), with a proven
| track record of keyboard.
|
| [1] https://www.fxtec.com/images/pro1x-landscape.jpg
| antattack wrote:
| Astro Slide 5G Transformer seems like a really good phone,
| one that I actually might get once it's past the Indiegogo
| stage.
|
| https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-
| slide-5g-transforme...
|
| EDIT: and it has a backlight keyboard!
| Fnoord wrote:
| I bought it on IGG because I want to support these guys
| while getting it early with discount (though less
| warranty), plus I like the Cosmo, but YMMV. They regularly
| got deals with discounts, not only limited to something
| like BF. Just bit of a bummer the downgrade from D1000 to
| D800, but its still a huge up from Cosmo. Plus, slide is
| more practical, I believe.
|
| PS: Re, backlight: aye, it does (at least Cosmo/Astro, not
| sure Gemini), and you can put it lower/higher/off (I pref
| to have it on as low as possible). Even on Linux (Gemian /
| Debian for Cosmo). There's some minor bleeding, esp on
| side, but IMO not annoying.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| It can't really be called the spiritual successor of the
| Nokia N900 if it runs Android. What made the N900 special
| wasn't just the hardware, it was also that it was running a
| traditional Linux environment, which means you could use that
| physical keyboard for all the hacking you can do on your
| desktop computer.
| rasjani wrote:
| > This is the spiritual successor of the Nokia N900
|
| There was next iteration called N950 which resembles this
| device even more. Sadly, it never shipped but I think Nokia
| shipped 100-200 prototypes to app devs before whole burning
| platform happened.
| [deleted]
| jascii wrote:
| Is the chipset supported by the mainline kernel? Their earlier
| "linux phones" basicly needed an android kernel and Linux support
| was close to non-existant.
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