Where is the modern day HTC Exec or Nokia N900?
Look what was taken from us in favour of slabs :(
(And, no, the answer is not one of the Planet range, sadly.)
That seems impractical. The keyboard is too big for thumbs and too small for classic home-row typing.
You want mobile keyboard perfection? Look no further than the Droid 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_3
It was my first smartphone and by far my favorite. Every phone I've had since then has been a let-down because it didn't have the keyboard.
Sadly no one makes a device like this either…
> That seems impractical. The keyboard is too big for thumbs and too small for classic home-row typing.
Sure, it was a bit of a compromise, but in practice it was pretty darned good.
The Droid 3 is much closer to the venerable N900, which was also a pleasure to use.
@neil I wonder whether with these new slim boards it would be possible to transplant them to older devices the same way people beefed up old IBM Thinkpads with Frame.work internals.
@neil I had an HTC Diamond, which used Windows CE (I think!) and I'm not ashamed to say that I really liked it. It was brilliant for work, I could do PowerPoint presentations from it to a projector via a video out cable, it ran an almost fully fledged version of Office and it synced with work's Exchange servers.
The slide out keyboard was brilliant.
It got nicked at Heathrow in 2010 :( while passing through the security bag check.
> It got nicked at Heathrow in 2010 :( while passing through the security bag check.
Oh, rubbish :(
@neil Maybe the Unihertz Titan or a Motorola Razr with Click keyboard?
I hadn't heard of the Unihertz Titan before - thank you!
@neil I used to have the O2 XDA Exec as they called it. Lovely device except for the lack of any kind of front screen, just an LED on the side, so without the faff of opening it up then closing it again to talk there was no way to know who was calling. I really liked it though. I upgraded from that to the Sony Xperia X1 then Motorola Milestone then there were no keyboards for a while and honestly I think the closest equivalent now are foldables. Opening them up and typing on the bottom screen isn't *good* but it's *fine* and it's a big screen when you need it to be. Before any of those I had a Psion 5 and I loved it and I would love for the Planet phones to be good as well but they are just sadly not. Even if they were though I don't think a hardware keyboard beats a foldable for me now. If I need to do serious typing I just pack a folding keyboard.
@neil indeed. I loved my XDA exec. ☹️ I wish I'd kept hold of it, but, you can't hoard *every* bit of tech.
@argv_minus_one @neil @liw it worked really well actually, the keys were convex so, similar to the blackberry, you could press individual keys easily.
@neil IDK, I've had all the Planet phones and, while not perfect, they've worked really well for me - you're not a fan then?
No - lovely idea, nice hardware, but the software was lacking. I'd hoped that the Linux support would be a lot better than it was.
I have had a Gemini and a Cosmo, but not an AstroGlide.
@neil no one has mentioned a pine phone with its keyboard attachment:
https://pine64.org/documentation/Phone_Accessories/Keyboard/
For good reason, I imagine - the keyboard is nice, but the phone itself is bloomin' slow!
@heavyimage I was hopeful for the PinePhone Pro, but I really struggled with that.
had such high hopes for it@tootbrute @neil Admittedly I haven't used one but I was curious about it as a small form factor terminal. In that use case it doesn't really matter how slow it is as long as it can run an ssh client at full speed! I imagine too you could write notes or text at full speed regardless of the performance of the device.
But yeah, if the use case requires more speed perhaps a phone with more modern hardware plus a small folding Bluetooth keyboard might do the trick.
I'd say "just about usable" rather than much more than that, sadly.
The PPP is definitely better.
Sorry, PinePhone Pro, rather than the original PinePhone.
@neil @tootbrute Oh sorry, I guess I meant the PPP and not the PP.
@neil Ah fair enough - yeah the keyboards are good, but their Linux support has never quite got to where it should be. Fortunately I'm happy enough with Android (with Termux for the Linux-ish things I want to do - here's hoping Google don't kill that with their upcoming policy changes!)
@mal3aby Are you able to run a non-EOL'd version of Android? I went straight for Linux, I must admit, but I thought that the Android versions were rather old?
@neil I wish Planet took their excellent keyboard design and turned it into a Bluetooth keyboard instead.
I used to have a HP 200LX, Nokia N900, Sony Clié UX50 and others, but nowadays my tired eyes can't deal with a screen smaller than 7" so my current ultra portable is a Chuwi MiniBook X N150, which is great but heavier than I'd like.
> Chuwi MiniBook X
I've looked at this a few times online, but I've not actually seen one / hand my hands on one.
What is it like to use (apart from being heavier than ideal)?
@neil Rui Carmo at Tao of Mac wrote a review I mostly agree with. Mine runs Linux, of course. The battery does not deplete as quickly when sleeping as my other Linux laptops. Battery life when active is middling to poor. Good compatibility, OK keyboard, decent screen, excellent build quality. Also very cheap.
It's nowhere near as fast as even a M1 Apple Silicon Macbook, but much more portable and without an OS in the throes of accelerating enshittification.
If you live in London I could show it to you in person.
@neil I've still got my Orange m5000 variant somewhere. It was a frigging great form factor.
@neil I will finally be at SCLUG with my Pocket Reform so... maybe that? :D
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 1
@jmtd Yes.
I have a GPD Pocket 2, and the keyboard is, sadly, infuriating.
@neil @fazalmajid I'm another very satisfied user, bought after reading Rui's review. Mine is running NixOS with GNOME and stuff.
It has been very stable, all of the features that I've tried have worked well. Suspend and resume in particular has never failed and, as Fazal says, it seems to consume relatively small amounts of battery when suspended.
The rotated TFT panel is an oddity, but nixos-hardware already includes the tweaks to improve it, if you were to use that.
Very impressed with Chuwi so far - I'm considering buying the larger version of the laptop (I imagine the internals are similar) for situations where a larger screen is useful and packing size is not so important.
Lastly, the price. I bought this machine to stick in a pannier or other overnight bag, so the size was important, but it also matters that I'm carrying around (and hence potentially damaging or losing) a machine that cost less than a quarter of most comparable systems.