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Comment by git-pull | Hacker News Reader

I admire the gumption of making a new phone.

But controlled obsolescence kills me. The real feature that improves in phones the past few years for me is the software and apps, not the hardware.

My wishlist:

- Give me a lighter, snappier OS. Not something clunkier and slower and uses more ram, gpu/cpu (aka battery life).

- Actually support updates to the things for longer than 2-3 years.

- (Not related to this phone) Use stock android, unless you're removing bloat. Why? Because inevitably there's going to be apps. What I want is a nice flat surface that includes wifi, bluetooth, and nice API's and permissions for those apps to plug into.

- The biggest feature you can give me on a phone? Battery life, Replaceable battery, Data/Cell reception, Speaker/Microphone quality.

- SIM card that's easy to get out.

- Actually, Dual SIM's.

- Support for carriers globally.

- And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with.

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> - And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with.

There is no market for this product. Nobody wants it except a tiny fraction of the market who work in IT.

Which is the people who make software for the rest of the users, so they'll buy this phone and write software for it, making it desirable for others.

As someone who has numerous Palm/HP devices running webOS and BB10 based Blackberry Passport and is a complete sucker for hardware keyboards, let me say that this assumption is false. People don't care about physical keyboards, it is not worthy the factory/design/maintenance costs. I still love them but I understand why vendors are not investing them anymore.

If "people who make software" could really influence the market, Linux dominance would have happened between the 90s and 00s.

Not to mention, why take the reliability gains we've made with these devices, likely because of the massive reduction in moving parts, and erase all that with a keyboard. An accessory seems like the right way to do this for those that really need it, and those accessories exist.

>If "people who make software" could really influence the market, Linux dominance would have happened between the 90s and 00s.

Er, the vast majority of computers run linux

Apparently you should give that advice to Google Chrome, which spends hundreds of thousands of money into making their developer tools better, a feature only a tiny fraction of their users want.

Google has a vested experience in improving the internet for all, because the more man-hours that are spent online, the more people are interacting with Google marketing and products.

To that end, they've always been very vested in improving web development for everyone.

Repeat after me: "Hardware is not software".

Software is far, far, cheaper than hardware. Building bespoke hardware for a tiny fraction of your customer base is insanely expensive, because the larger players have sewn up all the component orders. Once you build your hardware you are stuck with it forever. There is no "Day 1" patch for hardware.

If you needed further evidence you only have to look at the number of hardware Kickstarter projects that fail miserably because they grossly underestimated the cost and complexity of actually making a physical thing.

This is not a good analogy.

1) Google is an advertising company. They're not good at making products. If they were, they'd have a lot more profit come from places other than AdSense. They have literally dozens of products, and very few of them impact the bottom line. Clearly they do need to figure out what people want.

2) Dev Tools in Chrome is a way to get developers to target Chrome. This means Chrome is going to work better when browsing than other browsers.

3) Google has so much engineering bandwidth that Dev Tools is a tiny investment. It was useful enough (at the time it was released) to keep it entirely internal, honestly. Letting the public use it was just gravy.

4) Web developers are far, far more common than people who need to use SSH from a phone. Not all developers use SSH and not all developers have a reason to use it from a phone.

Chrome developer tools are pay-for-play. Aside from download size, users are not impacted by the existence of the developer tools. Users who don't want a physical keyboard can't exactly remove it.

And a big piece of that market doesn't even want it.

For the few times I've needed it, I've found an iPhone + Prompt SSH Client + Bluetooth Keyboard to be pretty effective. I do have a Chromebook these days as a "travel device", but in a pinch an iPhone will work. iPads also work great for emergency access to Windows desktops.

Blackberry make a couple of Android handsets with physical keyboards.

KeyOne seems to be selling well, I hope they release some cheap PKB phones in the future. Even if it has low-end specs, if it is less than $300, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

Not really. Manufacturers just stopped making phones with PKB because since Apple wasn't making them, they weren't worth it. It hard to estimate the demand for PKB phones when no one is making them. I'd buy one in heartbeat if one launched with low-mid end specs and less than $400.

We've constantly chosen form over functionality. Larger sized phones, fragile build materials(glass over plastic), lesser battery just so the phone can be thinner. The keyboard was given up to make room for a bigger screen and thinner body, and now writing anything more a few sentences on a phone is a pain in the ass.

Atleast in the era of dumb phones, for all the weird shit (Nokia's taco phone) that came out that time, at least the phones were distinct, you could tell them apart just by looking at them. Now they are all the same generic rectangular glass slabs that cater's to single demographic who want large screens for media consumption. What if you are not in that demographic? Well, tough luck.

I know am in the minority and it's not really Apple's fault that everyone decided to ape them, but a part of me wishes we hadn't given up the variety just to pander to the largest common denominator, even a little variation among phones would be a welcome change.

Decent specs, niche audience, cheap. Pick two.

That applies for niche audience laptops-- for example the gluglug laptop serves a small free-software fanbase but doesn't have decent specs.

But for cellphones, lots of values of "niche audience" end up with, "pick zero." Here are some examples:

1. Hook up a keyboard to ssh into the device. 2. Hardware switch to turn off the baseband OS. 3. Software toggle to turn off the baseband OS. 4. Sandboxed baseband OS that isn't proof-of-concept or impossible to buy and use in the U.S. 5. Free software baseband OS. 6. Open source "tivo-ized" baseband OS. I.e., user can read the source but cannot run modified version. 7. Just glue together a damned RPI with a baseband OS and ship it to me in working order.

Those are just the niches that interest me. Only #8 looks feasible in the near future and its apparently still in the planning stage:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone

So I think your "niche audience" needs an asterisk that says, "most niches not yet supported."

It's not an analysis of what's available on the market. It is a statement about constraints in manufacturing/production.

Also, you're missing #8.

Check out postmarketOS. It's porting mobile linux to a whole host of old smart phones. It's a relatively new (open-source) project, but has already progressed considerably. A lot of people (myself included) are excited about the possibilities of having a fully hackable linux phone.

I am not active in the porting side right now, but am prototyping a mobile computing device that runs pmOS. It's kind of a neuromancer style ono-sendai portable deck: A rectangular box (approx 11x29x3cm) that you can opem up and velcro your linux phone into and have a full-sized, stainless steel, porclean, or plastic mechanical keyboard and foldable mouse with slots for extra memory and battery life. It is designed to be as compact and as durable as possible, while staying true to the postmarket name by sourcing from reused materials whenever possible.

My hypothetical market is mainly highly mobile autonomous individuals residing in developing world megacities, but I'm interested to know what someone from the US or Europe thinks about the idea.

Oh ya, one more thing, the profits go to pmOS, to scale up a re-wilding project, and to getting these hackable linux devices into the hands of children forced to work in the supply/waste chain of electronics manufacturing.

How's that sound?

Considering I mentioned low end specs in the parent comment, I think I'll go with 'niche audience' and 'cheap' :)

What is the draw of a tiny physical keyboard? I can type much faster on an iPhone than with any similarly-sized physical keyboard. The only advantage I can think of is the ability to touch type without paying attention to the screen as closely, but for a phone that doesn't seem like a very big deal.

I could type faster (and without looking) on the old Nokia style keypads than I can on a touchscreen.

So could I. No looking at the keyboard and almost never making a typo. I had to backspace and correct 3 typos writing this on my iPhone with autocorrect fixing several more.

Maybe this will change with tactile screens. Touch screen keyboards are the result of a severe underestimation of the importance of the human element in hardware design.

That's surprising to me. The physical phone keyboards I have used have require far too much activation pressure for me to type anywhere near as quickly as I do on an iPhone. I do think my error rate would be lower with a physical keyboard, and I could obviously type better without looking at my keyboard, but the former isn't enough of a difference and the latter isn't something I would need to do anyway except perhaps in very unusual circumstances.

I think that lower error rate is the key. I've been using an iPhone since 2010 and I still can't type on it. The amount of time I spend pressing, holding, dragging the cursor back to make a correction, or backspacing, to fix errors more than offsets any difference in typing speed because of the pressure required on a physical keyboard.

Just speaking for myself, obviously, I'm sure other people may have different experiences.

also: much more screen-space as the keyboard doesn't have to take over.

I can still type faster on physical keyboards. But the two other noteworthy advantages were

1. Ability to use the phone as a emulator machine. I had a Xperia X10 Mini Pro few years back. I used for playing Snes, Genesis, GBA/C, NES games. Playing the same games with a touch keyboard is almost impossible. Not to mention native Android/iPhone games are just gimmicks at this point due to being crippled by having only touch based input.

2. It's easier to enter arcane commands and text with the physical keyboard. Useful for things like SSH, fiddling with the terminal etc.

I want an email client, talk, text, gps, music streaming app, dual sim, wifi, 4G Bluetooth, eBook/PDF, voice to text on an e-ink screen. Would settle for email client talk text and wifi on e-ink.

Edit: forgot tracking cookies, telemetry, and an animated paperclip assistant thing

Err...have you tried Yotaphone? They are coming up with a second iteration. Someone will probably hack it to use the secondary e-ink display to show whatever you want.

Looked into it previously and it seemed a little clunky... Android 2.x-side out keyboard-2009 era design. I assumed that would be a PITA to text/type and read on with the limited screen real estate. Will check out v 2.0 thought, Thanks!

Over the last few years I've been trying to limit my smartphone usage to exclude everything but productivity and communication apps that are pretty much required for my employment, friends, family, sustainance etc. I think an e-ink only device would be a huge benefit in that regard.

Wonder if there's a market for a device that is essentially designed to be all work and no play?

As I try to avoid becoming anymore of a smartphone zombie('living in the matrix') all of you connivingly clever SF/SV tech bastards just come up with sneaky new ways to increase Session Engagement, Duration/CTR/Time on Page... I'm stuck in a never ending attention war;-)

I haven't gone to any nuclear options yet: flip phone, massager pigeons.

It's like I'm craving some parental authority, take all of my toys, no TV, no video games, no comic books, no desert.

Sure would like some type of: [You can either read quietly in my room, or you can go to bed!]-type of smartphone!

Physical keyboards died because manufacturers want to save money by selling a single device worldwide. With a physical keyboard they would need a different SKU for every language region. Plus physical keyboards have terrible UX for non-alphabetic languages like Chinese (where much of the market growth is happening now). It sucks for users like us who type a lot exclusively in English because even the best on-screen keyboards are so much shower and less accurate. But we're no longer driving the market.

I mostly agree with your comment, but "fragile build materials(glass over plastic)" is weird to me, glass is much more pleasant to touch than plastic, and while it may shatter (which isn't an issue with plastic), plastic is easier to scratch, which used to be an issue before almost all phones got a glass screen.

Blind, partially sighted, and arthritic folks can all benefit from physical keyboards. Blind and partially sighted might be a smaller niche, but older folks with arthritic hands are a huge population. It's hard to be exact on a virtual keyboard when your eyes and fingers don't work the same as younger, able-bodied person.

Does "they can all benefit" mean "I think they would benefit" or does it mean "they have actually been demanding this due to the benefit"?

but one could also make the argument that a tiny, cramped, physical QWERTY keyboard is not going to be of benefit to elderly users with arthritis?

No, they benefit from the the magnifying glass feature, VoiceOver, and the ability to do voice to text input

I just can't type on screens. I have tried so many times. My current phone is a Blackberry Passport, previous one was an HTC Desire Z, and my next one (fingers crossed) will be this: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gemini-pda-android-linux-...

I'd like to ssh sometimes, but mostly I want to send text and emails like everyone else.

Shame that few companies have the guts to break the monoculture. It is vaguely ridiculous that most phones look identical.

> Shame that few companies have the guts to break the monoculture. It is vaguely ridiculous that most phones look identical.

You are describing cars. There is no market for cars which are driven with more complex mechanisms than steering wheels. The world has percolated around the optimal solution, and it is a touch screen.

It's not either or. The optimal solution is a phone that has a touchscreen and a keyboard. I had a HP Veer, and that one was way better for typing than all smartphones I ever had.

Touchscreens suck for typing. A smooth glass surface without haptic feedback can never be an optimal solution for that. It is only better for pure media consumption, if having only a touchscreen means having a bigger display.

Have you ever considered that maybe you're just bad at typing on a touchscreen, and some practice could help? I can type on my iPhone without looking at it, quite quickly, the OS's autocorrect fills in for my slight inaccuracies with pretty damn good accuracy.

The size a device must be to have both a keyboard and usable touchscreen puts it squarely out of the optimal solution category.

Not parent, but in the comment ancestry.

Yes, as I said, I find typing on a screen difficult and I've put plenty of effort into trying.

To draw a close parallel, dyslexic people have been forced for years to use conventional mass market writing equipment and told that they were stupid for finding that difficult. Mercifully people have stopped doing this. Same applies to left-handers if you want a broad example.

I find this dogmatic "everyone must be the same" and "there's only one way to make a phone / writing tool" quite bizarre and a bit paternalistic. We're not all clones. We don't all have exactly the same needs, or requirements for 'optimum solutions'.

I'm happily typing this on my BlackBerry Passport, which wider than some other people's phones, and sometimes draws comment. But it does the job I need it to so I'm happy.

> The size a device must be to have both a keyboard and usable touchscreen puts it squarely out of the optimal solution category.

The Motorola Droid managed to do it, and fit in my pocket. Scale it up a little to keep pace with modern phones, and you get screenspace and an even roomier keyboard.

Respectfully, I've been using iPhones exclusively for ~7 years and I can still type faster on a Blackberry after using it for five minutes. I type WELL over 100 wpm on a computer keyboard, up into the 140wpm for short periods of time. I really don't think the problem is more practice.

I don't have 7 years of practice, but a few, and it is similar for me. It's not even close. For me that's absolute intuitive: Of course one types faster when having haptical feedback. Very intelligent auto-completion and typing by swipe gestures maybe could come close some day, but doing that blindly will take an enormous amount of practice time. I'm not even sure humans can learn that at all, despite what parent said.

If this has to be a car metaphor, surely it's automatic vs manual transmission.

And there have been no mass market cars with joysticks but there have been a number of phones with keyboards.

And the manual transmission is also almost dead, at least in the US. And soon self driving cars and electrics will make the whole question moot, just like voice and gestures and mental control will make keyboard preference obsolete.

> at least in the US

They are alive and kicking everywhere else.

Not for long :)

I'm not so sure about optimal. Touch screen input devices always come with software that tries (and often fails, to humorous effect) to correct your typing because typing on a slick surface with no tactile feedback, to coin a phrase, fucking blows.

I think it's got more to do with negative perception. Keyboards found their way onto cheap (read: awful) Android phones and better (but app-less) Blackberry phones and the mindset carries the perception home.

If Apple were to come out with a keyboard phone, the rest of the industry would be doing it overnight before the sales numbers were in.

Have you tried swiping keyboards ? I don't think it's for everyone, there's only a few that do it well, and afaik none open-source which does it all (though I believe the functionality is in development for ASK); however I find that the GBoard with swiping and multiple languages is a very decent way to type text for most usage.

If you have a heavy use of the symbols we find on common keyboards, sure a physical keyboard might be better... But then once again good luck if it's not the layout of your heart.

I don't there's an easy solution for these glass slabs but I think that software keyboards have gone quite a decent way from what they were 4 or 5 years ago.

In my experience swiping keyboards don't really work for unix command strings. Which reminds me, I should buy a Passport. They're probably cheapish now...

Have you considered the Blackberry KeyOne?

My wife preferred physical keyboards, but like many, accepted the iPhone despite it's lack thereof.

I think there are still quite a few business professionals who miss their Blackberrys. But I agree, still a very small market. Personally I'd love to have a physical keyboard. Phones are big enough know that we could have a full size keyboard and still have more display than we had on an iPhone 4.

> - Give me a lighter, snappier OS. Not something clunkier and slower and uses more ram, gpu/cpu (aka battery life).

Well, Moto Z Play easily survives a day with 70%+ battery left. Of course Lenovo decided that that's untenable, and had to make Moto Z2 Play thinner and reduced battery capacity to be the same crappy one that we know from iPhones and other Android phones.

(It also has/had dual sim tray, SD card tray and the ability to add an additional battery package if three days weren't enough for you).

The current mobile phone "market" is downright terrible. Calling a market is perhaps an overstatement - you have a choice of marginally different 5,5" slabs with pretty much the same capability, battery life, screen. Want smaller display? Nope. Want more battery? Nooope. Want keyboard? Naaah.

The Moto Z Play has amazing battery life, and the Z2 play reduced the battery less than 20%.

While not as good, the Z2 play still has amazing battery life.

Agree, I have a Z Play and it is an amazing device. Not having to worry about charging your phone makes it a totally different experience. And it supports QC3 so when you do need to charge it takes <1hr.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I swear, but iOS checks all your boxes except "be android" along with dual sim and removable battery. And iOS hardware is still top of the pack when it comes to raw power in the majority of real use cases.

And you pay at least thrice as much, get far worse app support outside of the US (for example, in Germany > 85% of users are on Android, so that’s where the apps are), and you basically can’t develop at all for iOS (who’s gonna pay 3000$ to get a Mac and stuff AND 99$ a year just to build apps in their free time? Yeah, me neither).

> who’s gonna pay 3000$ to get a Mac and stuff AND 99$ a year just to build apps in their free time? Yeah, me neither

The Mac complaint is fair, but you can build and run your own apps outside of the store with a free developer account as of a couple years ago.

Edit: Also, a capable Mac development machine is closer to $1500 than $3k.

> but you can build and run your own apps outside of the store with a free developer account as of a couple years ago.

That doesn’t really help when you want to use the apps with a few friends. Honestly, Apple and Google can have whatever they requirements they want for their stores, but they should be forced by law to allow alternative stores.

And you’re right, the cheapest MacBook at 1499 EUR is around 1800 USD. That’s not nearly 3000 bucks, but an entirely different story than the 600€ I paid for my thinkpad or the 700€ I paid for my desktop. And I don’t want it anyway, I’d only use it for Apple development. And I’d already have to pay extra for the iPhone.

I bought a used 2012 Mac Mini for $450 and added some RAM and an SSD for $100. It probably wouldn't work great for large projects, but has been good enough for something a single developer can create on the side.

Maybe the friends could get developer accounts too?

you are no longer required to have a developer account in order to test your apps on your Mac and/or iOS device. to publish apps you still need the account.

Wait, you are saying you can now install arbitrary software on an IOS device, you don't need to use the app store?

Correct. The iOS 9 and 10 jailbreaks used this method to utilize app based exploit vectors. Unfortunately the app are limited to 7 days before signing again.

> Edit: Also, a capable Mac development machine is closer to $1500 than $3k.

More like $700ish. The Mac Mini is perfectly capable of doing iOS app development.

you basically can’t develop at all for iOS (who’s gonna pay 3000$ to get a Mac

That's assuming that you don't already own a Mac but a lot of people do.

Yes, but that box is oh so hard to check. ;)

Is it? I need my phone to do three things: 1) Make and receive calls & texts. 2) Run a small number of ubiquitous apps (maps, ride hailing) 3) Not get hacked at DEFCON.

Phones with the Apple logo on the back do this job best. Their security posture is just so much better and you don't have carrier-enforced forced obsolescence from the software side. You literally can always run the latest iOS until the hardware _just can't_.

I'm an open source guy only as much as it makes sense.

Don't forget about Blackberry! :P

New Blackberries are Android though.

>I'm an open source guy only as much as it makes sense.

That means you're not really an open source guy. You're just using whatever is best on the market at the time.

Then that would mean no one except for Richard Stallman are open source guys

And even he used to begrudgingly use non-free blobs while he didn't have an alternative.

When the open source option is significantly less secure, I'm not going to use it, sorry. I'll take the fundamentalist approach where I can...for example, Purism laptops or Raptor Talos hardware running BSD.

That kind of option doesn't really exist with phones because of market forces. This idea that Android is some better moral choice is a delusion.

Is this a No True Open Source Guy argument?

So you don't use any closed source software? What exactly is the bar for "open source guy" ? Sounds kind of like a No True Scottsman situation to me.

I have been having difficulty finding a good android phone that could replace the iPhone 5SE.

If I go apple again, I no longer have the ability to sync my phone, since my Mac died under a glass of wine and I "replaced" it with a Dell Precision 5520 running Arch because the MacBook Pro lineup was untenable.

I'd go apple again if I could actually backup,sync,etc my phone. It's a good device in isolation. But don't dare step out of the apple ecosystem.

Windows & iTunes in a VM?

Why not to use iCloud? It handles backups and sync.

I used a iPhone 5 for 3+ years and I found that every OS update performed worse and worse. I found that frustrating. So I'm not sure it checks the box of "lighter, snappier".

I now upgraded to a refurbished SE and it's really nice so far.

At this point I would buy any phone that shipped their OS as a buildroot or openwrt fork with a mainline Linux kernel. At that point you /know/ it's going to be updated.

I wouldn't even mind using FBterm for everything and not having a "modern" webbrowser, I don't think I've ever gotten anything usefull done on a mobile browser anyway.

Not a physical keyboard, but Hacker's Keyboard on Android is my favorite for SSH'ing

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketwork...

Agreed, I don't really feel a pressing need for a hardware keyboard with Hacker's Keyboard available.

This sounds like a terrible business with a minuscule market. The cost of designing, manufacturing and shipping something as complex as a phone is huge. By making the battery user-serviceable, and the software updates free and indefinite, you would eliminate any possibility for recurring revenue.

Make the batteries degrade really quickly and just charge $300 for a new one

> And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with.

Biggest thing I want is no aux port but __two__ (or more) usb-c ports instead. That way you can do stuff like plug in a keyboard/monitor or other standalone usb devices. I don't want to be forced to use weird all in one hubs for specific use cases. I want the UNIX philosophy with my hardware.

Bluetooth keyboards work great with Android devices. No cables required.

Heavily disagree. Especially when using ssh. I always have alt/ctrl issues, and I've tried a handful of them.

The lenovo thinkpad bluetooth keyboard w/built-in trackpoint has been working very very well for me, originally with the thinkpad tablet 2 it was designed for and these days with my second gen nexus 7.

Thanks. Ill give that a shot

I'm sure they are fine, but I don't see why I have to deal with bluetooth pairing and managing another device's battery. Plugging things in works great and is an overall more efficient protocol.

Just buy a usb hub instead?

That's kind of clunky and may cause issues with multiplexing high bandwidth protocols like monitors.

Clunky in the face of connecting monitors and many peripherals?

If anything it would make it way easier.

If I'm holding a phone I don't want a usb hub flapping around to plug in >1 device. More ports fit strictly more use cases. The only reason to limit phones to one port is so the manufacturer can save a few bucks.

Sure I can work around just about any problem, but I'm gonna say fuck you for making me.

EDIT: someone should fund me to make the ~11mm no speaker, no aux port, 2-4 usb-c port, dual sim, large/fast storage, beefy battery, rooted, juicy ass laptop killer that nobody knew they needed.

You happily accept many peripherals flapping around but won't accept a usb-hub that allows you to group them together?

This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/1172/

Now if we are going to talk about manufacturers saving a few bucks for the only reason of trying to be the bigger idiot we should take about the headphone jack.

> many peripherals flapping around

headphones and charger

A usb hub also doesn't fit into my pocket. What if I'm walking around and want to plug two things in? Well fuck.

EDIT: Also that is not a relevant xkcd. I'm not suggesting to break other peoples usecase in favor of mine. I just want two ports.

You should be able to do that with an adapter. And if you use usb for headphones (which by the way is just ludicrous) you already live the dongle-life.

Though the motorola Z phones has what you want. Add the turbopower mod and you get the powerpack and an additional usb connection that can be used for charging (not sure if that mod allows that usb-port for anything else), leaving the original unused.

The Z-line is also the closest you can get to a replaceable battery so that is pretty neat as well.

Agree on the battery life.

Also - give me the new iPhone 7 camera without having to get the "PLUS" size.

Also - for international carriers. Take a good look at t-mobile. International data+texting on their plans means I don't tough SIM cards ever anymore.

On top of that, I would add "make it 4.7 inches". When it comes to Android that is. The only current line of phones with specs I like is Xperia Z5/X Compact. First one is great, but overheats and is no longer available, the second one has a weirder design.

All I want is to get google fi on an iphone. Ok battery, reasonable lifetime (I can usually get 3.5 years out of an iphone) and cheap international data.

I have a Fi data SIM in an iPhone, and it works great. Not certain if you can sneak a voice SIM in.

You can, but it first has to be activated on a supported device, and can only connect to T-Mo.

You can insert a Fi sim into an iPhone. Officially this isn't supported, but you'll get reasonable service. What you won't get: auto switching between us cellular, TMobile, and Sprint; support; wifi calling via fi; and the Fi app. What you will get: TMobile service; International roaming at Fi rates; voice, data, and text.

Related to the last one: there's a keyboard mod for the Moto Z Play, which Motorola has officially approved, which is coming out next month.

Very cool! I wasn't aware it was Moto approved. I look forward to 3rd party reviews:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyboard-mod-a-physical-k...

115% funded, too! For a phone addon. Take that, "there's no market for it" doomsayers!

> - And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyboard-mod-a-physical-k...

You might be interested in the Pyra, though it's rather chunky for a phone - it nails every feature of your wishlist except dual SIM. It won't come with Android (that's the "lighter, snappier OS" part) but porting should not be a problem.

Worth noting that global carrier support is an extremely difficult feature if you include all the wacky US carriers that don't use GSM. In the Pyra's case, there are actually two versions - the "US" version and the "everywhere else" version.

> Give me a lighter, snappier OS. Not something clunkier and slower and uses more ram, gpu/cpu (aka battery life).

The apps you[1] install are what use up all your RAM & battery. The OS itself is light, fast, and efficient.

[1] Well, that either you installed yourself or that your carrier/oem "helpfully" bundled for you.

There are apps in aosp that are needlessly bloated too. Not that you can see much of source nowadays.

That phone already exists and I'm using it right now: the Gionee M6 Lite. Everything in your wishlist except the physical keyboard, for $130. Since it's a Chinese phone it doesn't get much hype.

I understand physical keyboards aren't really a thing for most folks. What I wish though is that someone would make sliding keyboard cases for either more models (only one I saw was for iphone) or something generic that I could clip onto a existing case.

There are some small pocket sized keyboards but with no way to attach to my phone they are not very useful.

----

For battery life I have been pretty impressed with my phone (xiaomi redmi note 3 pro) I only plug it in at night and can easily go 2 days without charging. It also charges extremely fast.

First phone I have owned since my nokia flip phone that I almost never think about battery life.

Have you seen the Nokia 6? Pure android with dual SIMs

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