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

Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#11

Post by jorvi »

wkirby wrote: post #3

I dream of building an apple watch case that adds a T9 bluetooth keyboard. Turn the standalone Apple Watch into the dumbphone I've always wanted.

This is exactly my dream too, especially after seeing the Apple Watch prototype dumbphone cases they used to conceal them in public[0]. It would be a glorious re-purposing of the Apple Watch to serve the most diehard fans of the killed iPhone Mini.

Sadly the Apple Watch doesn't do proper external text input. You can connect a bluetooth keyboard, but it works by sending all input via the VoiceOver accessibility feature, which is slow and fidgety.

[0]https://cdn.idropnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/1509254...

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#13

Post by bee_rider »

humanfromearth9 wrote: post #8

Blind-typing an SMS on a Nokia 3310 was so fast... or at least that was the feeling. I still regularly miss those keyboards, in particular when I hesitate between swiping a word or typing it, guessing how autocorrect will fail if I don't type... This never happened with my 3310, and there was no need for it at all.

I bet it just felt fast (there are lots of repeated key-hits, right?). I remember around that time (maybe a little later) I had a slide-out keyboard Samsung of some sort. I got a reputation for writing long texts, haha.

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#15

Post by zxexz »

humanfromearth9 wrote: post #8

Blind-typing an SMS on a Nokia 3310 was so fast... or at least that was the feeling. I still regularly miss those keyboards, in particular when I hesitate between swiping a word or typing it, guessing how autocorrect will fail if I don't type... This never happened with my 3310, and there was no need for it at all.

I used a flip phone for a ~week a couple months ago, I was amazed how fast T9 came back. Felt like riding a bike. I remember having a flip phone with a broken screen for a short while in the mid noughties, and being able to still make calls, send texts, change settings all from memory/muscle memory.

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#17

Post by kfarr »

jaffa2 wrote: post #4
fimdomeio wrote: post #2

The great thing about those keyboards was that a lot of people could just turn off text prediction and type text with a single hand without looking at the screen.

Huh? The great thing about T9 (certainly on the Nokia 3210 and 8210) back in the day was you could type messages fast with few k/s without looking. As long as you had enough experience to know the word combos. Ive never found a t9 system as good as the Nokia implementation. In some respects its better than qwerty for short messages. And don’t get me started on apples fundamentally broken auto correct system. People d…

I remember it would always default to book instead of cool

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#18

Post by gmueckl »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #5
jaffa2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The great thing about T9 (certainly on the Nokia 3210 and 8210) back in the day was you could type messages fast with few k/s without looking. As long as you had enough experience to know the word combos. Ive never found a t9 system as good as the Nokia implementation. In some respects its better than qwerty for short messages. And don’t get me started on apples fundamentally broken auto correct system. People d…

T9 works good for English and simple texts. If you need some other language, declensions, conjugations and non-Latin script things are no longer good .

Ericsson had a really good implementation for German. I would write entire text messages without looking.

Re: Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

#20

Post by nkrisc »

bee_rider wrote: post #13
humanfromearth9 wrote: post #8

Blind-typing an SMS on a Nokia 3310 was so fast... or at least that was the feeling. I still regularly miss those keyboards, in particular when I hesitate between swiping a word or typing it, guessing how autocorrect will fail if I don't type... This never happened with my 3310, and there was no need for it at all.

I bet it just felt fast (there are lots of repeated key-hits, right?). I remember around that time (maybe a little later) I had a slide-out keyboard Samsung of some sort. I got a reputation for writing long texts, haha.

I liked T9 but one of those Samsung phones you’re talking about were the last phone I had before I bought my first smartphone. Of course the one I had still had a keypad on the front so I could still type using T9 without looking.
Post reply on HN