I like having a physical keyboard, but not like this... it makes the phone too long. A slide out is preferred. I'm just going to stick with a regular bluetooth keyboard.
Man, the droid is still my favorite mobile device I’ve ever owned. Such a great form factor, and felt super cyberpunk - especially the droid 1 in the early days of smart phones. Shame Jony Ive won the design war, it’s all been flat black rectangles since then.
Having used a Gemini PDA from the same company (Planet Computers), that sure looks much more usable. The Gemini has a keyboard that closes onto the display, which on one hand does protect both the keyboard and the screen when closed, but makes for a really awkward experience when you need to use an app that only works in portrait mode. Was really quite nice for bringing around for coding or connecting over ssh. Can't complain too much about the hardware but the software could have used some more polish. The option to boot Debian was neat but felt like a proof of concept, stuck at an old version (though seems like some people managed to get it to update[0].
A phone later I ended up getting a Samsung foldable (currently typing this on a Z Fold 3) and while I prefer physical keyboards, a split keyboard on the inner screen works pretty well in my experience.
I dropped mine less than a foot and the display broke entirely, six months ago, and they never shipped the "protection pack" with extra screen protectors and a hard shell case. Their support has yet to reply, much less quote an RMA. :(
I am in a similar boat. That thing is relatively fragile, with no options for cases/screen protectors.
I think the company is well on the way to going belly up. Too bad too, their devices all had promise, they just needed to have more iterations to get better. They were too small clearly to even produce a new iteration, they were all-in on new designs from the Gemini / Cosmo / Astro Slide and now on to ARM Linux computers.
I still have a HTC One M8 in use for Android bug bounty hunting, used it as my daily driver until 2020 thanks for LineageOS folks never letting it die. Those things were horrible to repair (sadly how many phones aren't these days) but amazing little devices. I still miss having a phone that size to be able to use comfortably in one hand.
I had one of those too - quite liked it. I think I got that one after I stopped using a nexus 4. I had a temp samsung galaxy s9 for about 6 months that I hated and then ended up getting a pixel XL and have only really had pixel phones since (pixel XL, pixel 3a XL, pixel 6a).
I do miss the slidy keyboards on my old HTC phones - I think the first keyboard slider I got was an HTC Touch Pro still running windows mobile 6 because android wasn't a real thing then. That one required so much fiddling and rom stuff that LineageOS would have seemed like a beautiful dream.
>Your request has been blocked due to a network policy.
>Try logging in or creating an account here to get back to browsing.
>If you're running a script or application, please register or sign in with your developer credentials here. Additionally make sure your User-Agent is not empty and is something unique and descriptive and try again. if you're supplying an alternate User-Agent string, try changing back to default as that can sometimes result in a block.
>You can read Reddit's Terms of Service here.
>if you think that we've incorrectly blocked you or you would like to discuss easier ways to get the data you want, please file a ticket here.
>when contacting us, please include your ip address which is: [REDACTED] and reddit account
I want to throw it back even further to a Sidekick honestly. I never got to experience having one and I'd love a modern phone that flips open like the Sidekick does.
I liked my Sidekick, and the keyboard was pretty good. But honestly I've been pretty happy with how software keyboards have evolved, and I'm pretty sure physical buttons would just slow me down at this point.
However, one thing I'll continue missing from the Sidekick are the gaming controls. It had a horrible d-pad and buttons but at least it had them. They've been forced out of smartphones in the name of shaving off bezels and making the aspect ratio taller (eww). Give me a phone with a tiny d-pad and buttons please
I've never stopped missing it. Every time I start trying to ~swipe some technical term that the keyboard won't get unless I've added it previously. Every time I type 'n' instead of a space. And more.
I was perusing the patents a few weeks ago and noting that some of them are coming up (but some were a few years out).
I like having a physical keyboard, but not like this... it makes the phone too long. A slide out is preferred. I'm just going to stick with a regular bluetooth keyboard.