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Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

charlieharrington.com

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Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#31

Post by andrepd »

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…

It's a shame and a contradiction how the smartphone market has ballooned for the past few years yet choice is smaller and smaller.

How can it be that there are 100s of smartphone models out every year yet every single one has the same form factor? You cannot even get a phone smaller than the phablets of 6 or 7 years ago, let alone a phone with physical keys...

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#32

Post by andrepd »

paraknight wrote: post #5

I've been saying this for ages — the future setup is going to be phones as a singular device. When you get home, you'll dock it to be able to use your peripherals or extra monitors. Phones will become even more powerful, but even then anything heavy can be done in the cloud or at the network edge (with minimal latency thanks to 5g, see cloud gaming). OSs will become more convergent (Windows tried it, Huawei's doing i…

> even then anything heavy can be done in the cloud or at the network edge (with minimal latency thanks to 5g, see cloud gaming).

Hard doubt. And anyways, why 5G? I don't see any figures where 5G outperforms fiber in latency.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#33

Post by afandian »

aftergibson wrote: post #26
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…

Have you seen the Astro Slide? Name aside it does look pretty interesting. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

Before buying anything from Planet, see how well they have done at maintaining older devices. Latest release for Gemini PDA is Android 8.1, three years ago.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#34

Post by salamandersauce »

vbsteven wrote: post #2

The Remarkable 2 runs Android and has a USB-C port so it might support a wired keyboard. Although I’m not sure if the screen refresh and cpu are fast enough for comfortable typing. I already get frustrated using the onscreen keyboard for typing a 10 character notebook name.

It doesn't run Android. It runs Linux. There is already similar devices with front lit eInk screens and support keyboards out of the box too with Bluetooth or USB C. The Boox Note Air is an example. It's considerably more powerful than the Remarkable 2 and in the A2 refresh mode typing with a keyboard is not too bad.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#35

Post by AussieWog93 »

codetrotter wrote: post #30
lmm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I'm using a Surface Book 2 as my primary computer, with a Surface Dock set up on my desk at home with screen/keyboard/speakers/etc., I'm more confident than ever that this future is coming eventually - but also confident that it will take a long time. Having a single device makes a surprisingly big difference from having two separate devices (home PC and travel laptop), but is also not worth sacrificing powe…

Apple already made it possible on macOS to run x86_64 software on their ARM computers, with Rosetta 2. Any company with enough resources could do the same if they felt so inclined. And if Apple wanted to, Apple could make Rosetta 2 run on iOS devices. For now they want to keep them mostly separate, and are more about running iPad apps on macOS than the other way around. But there is nothing stopping Apple from runnin…

>Apple could make Rosetta 2 run on iOS devices

From what I understand, M1 Macs have specialised hardware that allows them to emulate x64 with good performance. It's not just software.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#36

Post by tluyben2 »

aftergibson wrote: post #26
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…

Have you seen the Astro Slide? Name aside it does look pretty interesting. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

Ah my previous planet device was stolen a few weeks after I received it. I hardly had a chance of using it.

The Slide looks more like a usable phone indeed. I never tried Linux on the previous one (which was my plan); with Linux I guess the 5g doesn't work? Anyone knows if wifi works with Linux on the Gemini or what works and what doesn't? For me to have a usable device, it would need to run Linux for somme things; I'm fine with Android for all phone user, but Linux with Wifi would be needed to do anything useful besides that.

If there would are (closed source) drivers for the 5g chip for Linux then this would be the 3rd new Linux phone on the market?

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#37

Post by tluyben2 »

afandian wrote: post #33
aftergibson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the Astro Slide? Name aside it does look pretty interesting. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

Before buying anything from Planet, see how well they have done at maintaining older devices. Latest release for Gemini PDA is Android 8.1, three years ago.

Is it not possible to put a newer Android on it yourself? Because you could run Linux on it as well?

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#38

Post by chewz »

paraknight wrote: post #5

I've been saying this for ages — the future setup is going to be phones as a singular device. When you get home, you'll dock it to be able to use your peripherals or extra monitors. Phones will become even more powerful, but even then anything heavy can be done in the cloud or at the network edge (with minimal latency thanks to 5g, see cloud gaming). OSs will become more convergent (Windows tried it, Huawei's doing i…

I am using old Android Xperia 10 with Termux, Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Chromcast screen to 27 inch TV. With Termux I will ssh into my server (using mosh).

Pretty decent and stable setup… And free as I have just gathered some old hardware pieces…

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#39

Post by canadianfella »

teekert wrote: post #27
timonoko wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutup son. I am 69. But I cannot type with my thumbs, like people under 30. I need always two hands to use the phone.

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 ;)

https://www.geckoandfly.com/8529/smart-keyboard-pro-t9-keybo...

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#40

Post by phicoh »

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.

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