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Comment by cheiVia0 | Hacker News Reader

That might be the first hardware crowdfunding I ever buy into. I've got a seething rage at just about every aspect of current phones and a huge nostalgia for Nokia's early smartphones.

Physical keyboard? Yay. Messages in natural language are one thing, ssh'ing into a machine or writing code is an entirely different topic.

Open systems thrive with exactly the kind of software I use almost exclusively. I can live without any mobile games - srsly, get a handheld or build one yourself[1] - and I don't use many other services I couldn't find alternatives for.

Related project:

https://pyra-handheld.com/

Mandatory warning: PowerVR.

ImgTec are still trying to hire someone to work on open source powervr drivers:

https://careers.imgtec.com/cw/en/job/495752/linux-graphics-d...

I pre-ordered as I am a very happy OpenPandora owner. It's a full Linux (especially now that I have Debian on it) and I can VNC or SSH with tablets and phones to it. When closed it consumes very little battery, it has tons of games and I can do full dev on it. The only annoying thing for me is an ARM thing; GHCi still doesn't seem to work on ARM, but that's a minor annoyance and last I check it is close to getting there.

Edit: to be honest; the Pyra is almost perfect for me (when using it with a $30 Android tablet as monitor it is very close). Currently my perfect all day computer would be a 10 inch tablet running (native) Linux with a stand, 3g and 15+ hrs battery life. I really like the MS foldable mobile keyboard but the only Linux ready stuff are full laptops or chromebooks. The chromebooks have no 3g unfortunately.

You're dead right on the games front. You can get a GBA for ~$20-$40, and have 100s of games that are a hell of a lot better than most of what sees release on mobile.

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