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

Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

charlieharrington.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–157 of 157 posts

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#151

Post by photojosh »

sixty4bit wrote: post #76

This is nice and all, but what I am waiting for is the phone to power my desktop setup. I walk up, drop the phone into a dock, and my three 27" monitors all wake up with the desktop exactly as I left it. To get there I think the GPU will have to be embedded in the monitors, and some interesting operating system hoops will have to be jumped through. Do cords have enough bandwidth now to support this? I honestly don't…

I would be a buyer too. I suspect the only reason it hasn't happened is that it would mean less revenue... why would I buy a laptop/desktop AND a phone then?

This rumour about Apple sticking one of their SoCs in a monitor [0] popped up the other day. Relevant here.

And their current Lightning->HDMI adapter uses an embedded chip that decodes a h264 stream of the "screen", potentially the exact same stream that would be sent via AirPlay to an AppleTV. CarPlay does something similar.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/23/exclusive-apple-testing-new-e...

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#152

Post by RedComet »

opan wrote: post #102
andai wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Ubuntu make a phone ten years ago that did that? But they gave up on it. I also thought Samsung phones could do that, too.

The PinePhone and Librem 5 can both be docked and used like computers.

Yes, I'm hopeful for the day they work well as phones, too.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#153

Post by teekert »

tluyben2 wrote: post #118
teekert wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still wishing for T9 to come back... Every generation has its thing. Maybe it's time to try dictation and get past the feelings of silliness ;)

Not sure how that works with a lot of noise and people (subway, busy streets, airplanes etc); it seems to type out complete crap random people around me are shouting. So in reality touchtyping is faster.

Ah yes, outside, busy places, it's been a while :)

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#154

Post by axiolite »

phicoh wrote: post #40
axiolite wrote: post #19

It was around 2000, after buying a Cassiopeia E-100 that I realized a keyboard makes any computer massively more usable. With that I bought a Psion 5MX, used it great success, and never considered a device without a physical keyboard again. Switched off to Nokia Communicators, then several Android Sliders. All worked great. I was always the guy in the conference room who could login to servers and look-up info, despi…

My experience with some early Android sliders (HTC Dream and HTC Desire Z) is that the keyboards don't have all the keys I need. So in the end, typing the usual array of Unix and C graphics characters was a bit of a hassle. For years now, I have used the Android "Hacker's Keyboard" on lots of ssh sessions. Though I guess I would take a slider if it had a full (5 row) set of keys.

> My experience with some early Android sliders (HTC Dream and HTC Desire Z) is that the keyboards don't have all the keys I need.

That's what the Sym button is for. Pop-up a menu on screen showing other, less-frequently used keys. Several apps included similar workarounds.

The LG F3Q did a good job with their keyboard, only omitting tab and pipe, but it was possible to remap keys to get those.

But then again, I'm from the dumb terminal days... I'm used to systems which are missing common keys, and using combos (e.g. Ctrl+i for tab) instead. Doing that on a physical keyboard was infinitely more productive than an on-screen keyboard, even Hacker Keyboard.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#155

Post by deergomoo »

danlugo92 wrote: post #134
deergomoo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they’d make a monitor that doesn’t cost $5000. It’s basically impossible to find a 27”+ monitor that works optimally with a Mac because they’re all 4K, and the way macOS handles scaling means you have to scale by a non-integer factor. Just give me the 5K iMac panel in a basic shell, that’s all I need.

> and the way macOS handles scaling means you have to scale by a non-integer factor. There's no 2x?

There is 2x, but for 4K at >= 27”, 2x would make all UI elements comically large.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#156

Post by rambambram »

dTal wrote: post #120
rambambram wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks indeed for the review! I came across these devices once, and I always wondered if it was more gadget-like, or really useful. Have you tried running Ubuntu MATE on it?

On which, the Cosmo or the MicroPC? I was never brave enough to tinker with GNU/Linux on the Cosmo while it was my daily driver. I'm pretty sure that using the device that way comes with some pretty sever compromises. On the Micro PC, I run Void Linux with KDE Plasma. I didn't do anything special, everything's mainline, so I'm sure at a technical level Ubuntu MATE would work perfectly well. The only interface tweaks…

Thanks. I meant on the Micro PC. I guess you already mentioned KDE Plasma somewhere. I definitely don't take my laptop everywhere, but I'm contemplating. Such a Micro PC looks very promising, exactly for the reasons you stated!

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#157

Post by mbirth »

andai wrote: post #90
sixty4bit wrote: post #76

This is nice and all, but what I am waiting for is the phone to power my desktop setup. I walk up, drop the phone into a dock, and my three 27" monitors all wake up with the desktop exactly as I left it. To get there I think the GPU will have to be embedded in the monitors, and some interesting operating system hoops will have to be jumped through. Do cords have enough bandwidth now to support this? I honestly don't…

Didn't Ubuntu make a phone ten years ago that did that? But they gave up on it. I also thought Samsung phones could do that, too.

MaruOS was a project that tried this for a bunch of phones.

https://maruos.com

Post reply on HN