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Show HN: Pocket Puter

pocketputer.com

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Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#21

Post by mark_l_watson »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #10

I've used my smartphone as my only personal computer for the past 3 years. Overall, it's been a positive experience. The only thing I can't do efficiently is software development. Is anyone familiar with the state of the art in mobile software development?

As jmiller099 suggested, AIDE is a nice IDE that runs on an Android. I used to use it before I switched to an iPhone.

On my iPhone and iPad I use an SSH app to access a VPS that I use only for coding, running machine learning problems overnight, etc. This works well on an iPad but is cumbersome on an iPhone. I like emacs, and remote dev in an SSH session works for me.

On my iPhone and iPad I really enjoy Raskell: a very nice Haskell IDE that is fine for writing short programs.

For Python, Pythonista is a very good IDE! Really good.

I like traveling lite with only a phone. I would have real difficulties doing what you do, using a smartphone as only personal computer but what you do would really help work/life balance.

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#22

Post by mark_l_watson »

I really enjoyed the author's story - spent 10 minutes looking at her web sites and donated.

The textbroker.com writing service she mentioned looks cool - just forwarded that link to a friend who is an excellent writer and who needs work.

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#23

Post by DoreenMichele »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #10

I've used my smartphone as my only personal computer for the past 3 years. Overall, it's been a positive experience. The only thing I can't do efficiently is software development. Is anyone familiar with the state of the art in mobile software development?

I researched this while I was still homeless. I was told you could develop in Kivy on an Android device (at least on a tablet). I was never able to make it work, but I don't have serious programming experience. I just know a little CSS and HTML. Also, that was a few years ago. Perhaps things have improved.

https://kivy.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kivy_(framework)

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#24

Post by jannes »

I love this project! Great work!

Quite a few years ago I was using the combo of a feature phone + iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the phone). So I definitely remember the struggle of having to find WiFi hotspots and plan ahead the offline material for times without connectivity. I was living in a country with very few places that offered free WiFi at the time - compared to the US - due to legal liability reasons.

I was using apps like Instapaper, "Read it Later" (now called Pocket), Khan Academy, iTunes U (it has many absolutely great university lecture recordings) and occasionally YouTube downloads. These days both Chrome and Safari can download entire web pages as an archive for offline reading, so now I would probably just use those browsers instead of Instapaper or Pocket.

Sometimes I miss being a bit more "disconnected" like that, though.

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#25

Post by RyanShook »

jannes wrote: post #24

I love this project! Great work! Quite a few years ago I was using the combo of a feature phone + iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the phone). So I definitely remember the struggle of having to find WiFi hotspots and plan ahead the offline material for times without connectivity. I was living in a country with very few places that offered free WiFi at the time - compared to the US - due to legal liability reas…

Where is the download page feature in Chrome and Safari?

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#26

Post by jannes »

RyanShook wrote: post #25
jannes wrote: post #24

I love this project! Great work! Quite a few years ago I was using the combo of a feature phone + iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the phone). So I definitely remember the struggle of having to find WiFi hotspots and plan ahead the offline material for times without connectivity. I was living in a country with very few places that offered free WiFi at the time - compared to the US - due to legal liability reas…

Where is the download page feature in Chrome and Safari?

In Chrome for Android the feature is available in the first row of its menu. Look for a download icon without any text (the third icon from the left).

In Safari you just have to add a page to your reading list and it will be saved for offline access to your device.

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#27

Post by stirlo »

vortico wrote: post #2

In the "battery" section, perhaps it is useful to mention that if you have a phone with a removable battery, you can buy extra batteries (normally $5 each on eBay) and a battery charger (also $5) to charge two batteries at once. You can carry multiple batteries to extend your battery life to a week if you want.

What percentage of phones are sold with removable batteries these days? <5% would be my guess. Kind of irrelevant information really. Just stick to "Buy an external USB battery pack for $20 and remember to bring your charging cable with you"

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#28

Post by StavrosK »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #17
gelstudios wrote: post #15

Congrats, that’s a catchy domain name you got there. I noticed it’s setup with a redirect, have you considered blogspot’s CNAME feature? It lets you host your blogspot blog at a custom domain like yours without redirecting to a subdomain. The benefit is if you ever switch where the content/blog is hosted, any links/bookmarks to your site can still work. They have a guide for various registrars (see below), but there’…

Congrats, that’s a catchy domain name you got there. Thanks. It took some effort to come up with it. have you considered blogspot’s CNAME feature? No, I am not planning on using blogspot's CNAME feature. It breaks when you type in yourdomainname.com. You have to include the www for it to work. This is a bug that causes problems. I would rather it just be a redirect for now. That serves my stated purpose in buying a d…

You can use a static website generator and netlify.com, which is free and can be set up in minutes. I use it for my sites and I'm very happy with it.

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#29

Post by vortico »

stirlo wrote: post #27
vortico wrote: post #2

In the "battery" section, perhaps it is useful to mention that if you have a phone with a removable battery, you can buy extra batteries (normally $5 each on eBay) and a battery charger (also $5) to charge two batteries at once. You can carry multiple batteries to extend your battery life to a week if you want.

What percentage of phones are sold with removable batteries these days? <5% would be my guess. Kind of irrelevant information really. Just stick to "Buy an external USB battery pack for $20 and remember to bring your charging cable with you"

No, it's about 30%. https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/ vs https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/sets/3

Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter

#30

Post by stirlo »

vortico wrote: post #29
stirlo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of phones are sold with removable batteries these days? <5% would be my guess. Kind of irrelevant information really. Just stick to "Buy an external USB battery pack for $20 and remember to bring your charging cable with you"

No, it's about 30%. https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/ vs https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/sets/3

There's 75 on that chart out the "600 currently popular phones" A bunch of them are obsolete windows phones and variants of low end ones. Under 5% by sales seems reasonable to me.
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