Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

fxtec.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 358 posts

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#201

Post by Dirlewanger »

tetris11 wrote: post #171
chaorace wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-layo…

instant haptic feedback, nothing better than that

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.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#202

Post by AnssiH »

adenozine wrote: post #41

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.

Huh, everyone is always intrigued by my Pro1 (looks same as Pro1X but black).

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#204

Post by fragile_frogs »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #75

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.

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?

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#205

Post by yndoendo »

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.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#207

Post by spazx »

tifadg1 wrote: post #23

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?

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.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#208

Post by bradfa »

varispeed wrote: post #123
Ashanmaril wrote: post #102

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…

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.

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.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#209

Post by [deleted] »

thesuitonym wrote: post #188
seanhunter wrote: post #110

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 gen…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#210

Post by habeebtc »

cstross wrote: post #91
raesene9 wrote: post #11

For another option, along similar lines, which has been shipping for a while now, there's https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices

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 prom…

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.

Post reply on HN