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.
Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
101–110 of 358 posts
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#102It'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
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a non-meh processor means less battery time. I'd prefer meh processor to meh battery life. Meh.
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.
Can someone expand on this? My anecdotal experience contradicts this and I don't know much about CPUs.
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#104Am 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.
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.
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#105Last 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 lik…
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
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#106For 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?
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.
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#107For another option, along similar lines, which has been shipping for a while now, there's https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices
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.
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).
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#108I 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.
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
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being able to touch-type is the reason I want one. You just can't do that with a touchscreen keyboard.
Can you touch type with only your thumbs? I don't think I could, but you'd have to with a keyboard that small.
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.
Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard
#110There'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.