Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard • Hacker News Board

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#331

Post by b112 » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #235

b112 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hardwa…

> 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…

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.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#332

Post by NathanielK » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

aembleton wrote: post #323

NathanielK wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I was going to try that keyboard out but it isn't compatible with my phone (Android 10). Not sure why.

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://github.co...

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#333

Post by abawany » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #152

anotheryou wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple? My swiftkey on android is sooo much better.

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…

The one thing that made Swype awesome compared to GBoard is the configurability. On GBoard, it appears to be impossible to turn off auto space insertion after a predicted swipe whereas on Swype, one could turn that off: this allowed swiping away at long urls a word at a time.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#334

Post by knolax » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

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?

IMO autocorrect only works well if all of the following are true:

1. You only speak one language, and never find yourself in a situation where you encounter transliterated foreign words or names.

2. You never use any obscure or technical words. No jargon or slang.

3. You also never find yourself in a situation where you have to come up with new terms and abbreviations.

4. You never use the keyboard for any notation other than prose. No code.

5. You agree 100% with the orthographic choices of whoever made your autocorrect.

Personal experience tells me that as a result anyone who has autocorrect on tends to be a boring conversation partner.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#335

Post by PiotrVonKleve » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

For full keyboard I would suggest the Titan [0] from unihertz for $340 (QWERTY 4G Rugged Smartphone) with 6GB RAM and 128GB Storage. I don't, but the specs look interesting.

[0] https://www.unihertz.com/titan.html

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#336

Post by comex » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC

PH01 wrote: post #37

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?

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…

Personally, I can get 75-80 WPM with two-handed non-swipe typing on my iPhone, with autocorrect on, albeit making a few uncorrected errors. Now, I have never spent any significant amount of time with physical phone keyboards, so I can’t personally compare the experience. But from some Googling, 75 WPM seems to be at the high end of what people could achieve on old BlackBerries. So or oductivity-wise, it doesn’t seem like I’m missing out on much. YMMV.

That said, autocorrect only works for English text. If I’m trying to, say, type a shell command into an SSH session, I do have to slow down quite a bit.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#337

Post by comex » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

akalsz wrote: post #168

OGWhales wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

I can get around 75-80 WPM tap-typing on my iPhone. No weird grip.

Though, to measure that I had to make my own typing test, because after trying multiple websites and native apps, I couldn’t find any tests that didn’t disable autocorrect. Accuracy without autocorrect may be interesting to measure, but in real-world typing, I intentionally sacrifice accuracy for speed and let autocorrect pick up the slack. A test of practical typing speed should take that into account.

If anyone else wants to try, here is my very barebones test:

https://a.qoid.us/typetest.html

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#338

Post by xekul » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #198

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…

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 usefu…

The Unihertz Titan could be described as a spiritual successor to the BlackBerry Passport: similar form factor, rugged build quality and long battery life, but runs Android 10. I'm typing on one right now.

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#339

Post by SamBam » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

LilBytes wrote: post #269

ForHackernews wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Swype or at least the functionality behind it still exists with Swiftkey on Android.

Ayer having tried Swiftkey for a few hours, I've reverted back to gboard. I don't know if my old keyboard knows me more or I know it, but Swiftkey just could not get words right, even when I could clearly see the trail hitting the letters.

Maybe its prediction was turned up too high, and yet not correctly? When I finally gave up I had been trying to write The Warmth of Other Suns, and it could not get "Suns," no matter how slowly and accurately I did it, presumably because "subs" or "sins" are much more common words. (Actually gboard has trouble with Suns right now too, but not as bad.)

I'm waiting for one of these to come installed with GPT-3. Presumably a GPT-3 model could look at a sentence and work out which sword doesn't fit...

Re: Pro1 X: A Linux smartphone with slideout keyboard

#340

Post by LilBytes » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #339

LilBytes wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swype or at least the functionality behind it still exists with Swiftkey on Android.

Ayer having tried Swiftkey for a few hours, I've reverted back to gboard. I don't know if my old keyboard knows me more or I know it, but Swiftkey just could not get words right, even when I could clearly see the trail hitting the letters. Maybe its prediction was turned up too high, and yet not correctly? When I finally gave up I had been trying to write The Warmth of Other Suns, and it could not get "Suns," no matt…

Yeah, I'm not using swype. Just SwiftKey but I find it gets it wrong most of the time. It occasionally picks up typos and I'm actually writing this comment without manually correcting any errors. To try and gauge how well it does. And I don't type well. It seems. To be decent enough. Almost anyway.

Tkl that last sentence.ortoq.

(till that last sentence of two...)