What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to? Youngins were born and raised touching the screen, so it's archaic to them. Old timers are jaded at this point to either wait for their dream phone or buy any cheap crap.
So who's the target for this 900 usd device?
Agreed regarding target audience, though.
Then it was killed, and Android shipped its default keyboard ("gboard") with one that included swiping. I've used it ever since, not thinking about it, but it has never been as good as Swype, and about 20% of my words are errors. I don't think about it much because their autocorrect suggestions are pretty good when you tap on a word, but it really is annoying. Honestly, it's insane that I keep swiping because it would be faster just to type than to swipe and correct every fifth word.
I have now downloaded Swiftkey. We'll see if it's any better. My first gripe is that the backspace key doesn't delete a whole word, which, when you're swiping, seems natural to me (either the whole word is right or it's not), but I'm sure there are settings and improvements I can make as I get used to it.
(Edit: The translate as you type feature is a perhaps-niche but killer feature for me. I often have to write to people in my poor Spanish, and always had to go back and forth between the Translate app and the app I was writing it. Doing it as I type is amazing.)
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17030216/nuance-discontin...
Maybe its prediction was turned up too high, and yet not correctly? When I finally gave up I had been trying to write The Warmth of Other Suns, and it could not get "Suns," no matter how slowly and accurately I did it, presumably because "subs" or "sins" are much more common words. (Actually gboard has trouble with Suns right now too, but not as bad.)
I'm waiting for one of these to come installed with GPT-3. Presumably a GPT-3 model could look at a sentence and work out which sword doesn't fit...
Tkl that last sentence.ortoq.
(till that last sentence of two...)
Inspired by this thread, I just went looking for an alternative and found Yandex.Keyboard. I've been using their browser on Android for a long time but had no idea they did a keyboard too. First impressions are pretty good. In typing this comment, I've had to correct 2 words so far. With SwiftKey, I'd have had that many corrections to do in each sentence!
YMMV --as I said, I've only been using it for under an hour
My favourite phone ever designed was the BlackBerry Priv. It was an Android-based smartphone with a full-sized (5.4in) touchscreen, an completely-hidden slide-out physical keyboard, that also doubled as a touch-sensitive pad.
You could "swipe" (touchscreen-style) over the keys, and then press down on those same physical keys simultaneously. But you could also slide it back into the phone, and use it just like any other iPhone or Android ever made.
It's the best of both worlds, really.
Was almost pure android, incredibly secure. Blackberry got it right, then bailed.
You cannot re-invent a brand in a bit more than a year. They should have expected years to see significant adoption.
Worse, the people who trusted Blackberry, often didn't want a Chinese company making their hardware.
Sad really.
An example, I was on a plane. Guy next to me, a Canadian, had never heard of or seen the Priv, and had a Samsung.
When he saw me scrolling a webpage up and down with the touchpad/hardware keyboard, use it for gestures, then type with swipe completion via the hardware keyboard, and keep a full screen, he immediately wanted one.
I had to tell him the last security update was 2 months ago, and it looked like the end of line.
How many people didn't even know? I wonder that, to this day.
Further to that, phone purchase cycles are often 3 or 4 years. They gave it no chance IMO.
iPhone happened 2007, Android, 2008. Their “people love our software never hardware” self deception had completely wiped positive brand values by that point, along with trust from the market towards mobile hardware keyboard, because BB engaged anyone getting close to their level of sophistication in the technology, rendering competitors’ implementations inconsistent and lackluster as the result.
I still don’t fully understand serial suicides in phone market 2007-2012, it was strange times. Lots of companies were politely asked to finish their free lunch session and most decided to burn their retirement instead of accepting it.
The CEO, the board, the top execs, marketing, etc, need to force use that product exclusively. So they know. So they get it.
Because it seemed like many floundered by not understanding the differences, what was important.
RIM could have done so much, but they didn't even get it, or seem to understand why people were bailing.
Where was RIM's board? CEO replacement took too long too.
Ah well.
Even better is the effect this has on battery life. The screen is the biggest battery drain on nearly every phone, and so having a little less means my phone lasts all weekend on a single charge. Because I don't watch video on my phone (or read the bottom half of the screen) anyways, there's really no drawback for me to "losing" a third of my screen, only benefits
The Priv had a slide out hardware keyboard, the optimal solution IMO. Full size screen on the device, hardware keyboard too.
I know what you mean, but the keyone didn't lose 1/2 its screen, to lose something, you have to have it first. If it lost 1/2 its screen, it would end up with 1/4 of phone's length with usable screen.
Agree with all you said about software keyboards.
I did run into someone using it though, and when I asked him how he liked it, he said it was great. The keyboard was more important to him than anything else.
Sadly BlackBerry haven't released new hardware for ~3 years and their software is barely on life support. A shame since they have a knack for functional design.
[1]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blackberry...
Maybe there's still BlackBerry Manager apks around. I'd recommend trying it out, it's still an excellent typing experience. Haven't found anything to replace it yet.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201121204253/https://github.co...
Pre-smartphone plenty of people touch typed text messages. No need to be staring at the screen. Stealth messages could be sent without taking the phone out of your pocket.
Physical keyboards probably appear to a significant section of people who would like to use their phone as a productivity device. Surely if swipe typing is so good it would be an option in Windows 10?
I agree on the price but I am still considering purchasing this phone.
Does everyone else swipe type now?
I'm quite curious about your `weird grip'; 80-90 wpm on a touchscreen sounds absurdly fast.
Though, to measure that I had to make my own typing test, because after trying multiple websites and native apps, I couldn’t find any tests that didn’t disable autocorrect. Accuracy without autocorrect may be interesting to measure, but in real-world typing, I intentionally sacrifice accuracy for speed and let autocorrect pick up the slack. A test of practical typing speed should take that into account.
If anyone else wants to try, here is my very barebones test:
My left hand has the middle finger on the side edge, thumb on the bottom edge. The rest of the fingers hang.
My right hand supports the back of the phone with 3 fingers, pointer on the side edge and the thumb types.
Hope they helps describe it. My family and friends make fun of how fast and loud I type and my weird grip, but I do take pride in my speed :)
Remember when phones were predictable enough that you could remember where everything was and navigate anywhere through memory alone?
Nowadays you need to be very skillful to even open the app you meant to, let alone press the right keys on a keyboard.
Heck, sometimes between all of notifications, video overlays, recommendations, ads, frequent redesigns, non-deterministic search results and whatnot, you might congratulate yourself for being able to do the thing you meant to at all!
(And no, I don't have any physical, vision or mental impairment, and I have grown up with technology)
That said, autocorrect only works for English text. If I’m trying to, say, type a shell command into an SSH session, I do have to slow down quite a bit.
Some of them are programming languages.
Also a touchscreen can not be operated with sweaty fingers or slightly unusual conditions.
No they really can not be reliably used, recent years’ improvements notwithstanding.
If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in the cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands, I’d appreciate a 100% physical keyboard controllable one.
Touchscreens are handy though as an auxiliary control in the ideal circumstances.
Man, we have very different lifestyles. Are you a serial killer? :)
> Some of them are programming languages
You’re the first person I’ve known who programs on phone hardware rather than using a larger computer with emulators. It must be quite painful for you!
This device is really interesting, but I agree that the product market fit is slim.
As far as programming on the phone, I used to leave my computer at work and have a computer at home. On the commute I would only have my phone. If I am at the grocery store and the client calls and says their server is acting funny, I might not want to wait to SSH to it from home or run to the office.
I think this is all a moot point in that you are right: at this point most people don’t have the need for a physical keyboard. But at the same time, I think some small subset of people will want a physical keyboard.
While it is undeniably more comfortable to program with a nice keyboard and big monitor, emergencies can demand that you work with what you have. Typing
cat /tmp/accumulatedfiles | while read line ; do sed -i '/inner\;/outer\;/' < $line ; done
can be rather frustrating without a real keyboard.
Emphasis on “most”.
The size of this (as well as the Astro Slide[0]) deters me from buying though. Well COVID as well since I'm not on the move as much as I used to. But size-wise it's just too big, a phone this size doesn't comfortably fit in my pocket. Wish someone made something N900-sized (but lighter and thinner). The large size is great when used in computer mode, but most of the time you're using it in phone mode so I'd prefer to have it smaller.
[0] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...
You don't need to write code on your phone? Me neither. But if some server suddenly starts acting weird while I'm on a roadtrip and everything I have is a smartphone, I sure as hell would not enjoy the typical SSH session using swype and autocorrect.
This sort of example always strikes me as odd because it seems far better to have a an oncall rotation for this sort of thing.
Granted that nobody has this for their personal servers, but that by definition is not an emergency.
However, if it's for a service you are providing to a paying client, I'd hope they aren't relying on a server being reset by a single individual who might be on a road trip.
It wasn't an emergency, but I've certainly wanted to use my phone recently while outside shoveling after a blizzard, with hands that are simultaneously cold, wet and sweaty. Heck, I can hardly use my phone when I'm done at the gym. And one doesn't have to be a serial killer to get blood on their hands in say, a fall while hiking, a crash while biking, or when dialing 911 while rendering aid to someone else whose blood is now on your hands.
There are 2 types of people in this world: people who would like a phone to work at such times, and people who feel like they have to do things like panic-buy toilet paper during a pandemic.
Those who have never lived a more rugged life do not understand.
Are you doing programming on your smartphone?
I agree with the rest - sweaty fingers or wet fingers in general, or god forbid you want to wear gloves where it's cold.
But programming on a smartphone?
Can't now because my device doesn't have sufficient access, but I used to have VPN on it.
Out of necessity or just for fun/curiosity?
No, mostly because it lacks a physical keyboard.
Everyone making phones caters to the 80% case, there are economic reasons for this (supply chain runoffs, manufacturing equipment and software) so making something for the remaining 20% cases is increasingly expensive.
To answer your question directly, me (a 31 year old white man technologist) and my friend (a 28 year old white man technologist)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This phone looks perfect! Up until I saw the processor. A snapdragon 662 sounds like it would be a step back in time.
So I guess I'm on the jaded list. My dream phone would have a landscape physical keyboard and a Samsung/Wacom pressure sensitive stylus. All with a flagship quality CPU/GPU. I could care less about multiple camera lenses. Anyways, never gonna happen.
Sysadmins, hackers, etc. Ever tried ”swipe typing coupled with autocorrect” in an SSH session?
I'm saying maybe it's legit, maybe I'm just oldfashioned.
My current emergency set: stock Android phone (with OTG), Termux, VPN client, RDP client, cheap lap phone stand with USB keyboard which I keep in my car. I also keep my own jumpbox servers with software required by employer/customer, which is not easily installable on phone without quirks.
My todo: check some Dex dongle with HDMI to use hotel TV as external screen; figure out if I can cast phone screen onto car's screen with Mirrorlink.
I definitely welcome this. Swipe typing has been completely unusable for me, personally (I must be doing it wrong, Galaxy S10) and the display registers so many typos when I type that I often break out the whole laptop to type a simple whatsapp message.
The price is steep; if the phone is good though, it definitely interests me.
Although I have to say, moving back to iOS has been pretty amazing. Swiping on the normal iOS keyboard allowed me to type this entire message from bed with one hand... barely any autocorrect kicked in...
That's great. Meanwhile text input on phones is astonishingly frustrating in many other languages; for one because we also use english words and expressions in our native language, and this alone will already completely derail >90% of text correction and completion systems. Now add another "smart prediction" layer on top with swipe input and the result switches between "decent" and "totally unusable" from one sentence to the next.
And without swype I find touchscreen-based text input just as frustrating. It's a constant cycle of fixing typos using the worst UI possible. We need a "UI dark pattern from hell" award just so we can give one to the genius who came up with Android's pixel-perfect cursor placement mechanism to select text(which Google, for whatever reason, just refuses to fix in any way).
Running kubectl edit and then using vim from a physical keyboard is very doable. Trying to do it from a touch keyboard is a nightmare.
If you can type quickly, touchscreen typing is really fucking awful.
I can't really say why I like typing on a physical keyboard, but not losing half of your screen to a virtual keyboard and also having access to modifier keys like shift, ctrl and alt are the top two reasons I prefer having the physical keyboard. Also it slides out so you only need to use it when it will help.
Typing on a physical keyboard feels like going back a couple steps. I would like actual buttons on the phone though - for gaming. And maybe a little touchpad? That's what I'd put on a pull out pad. Now the problem becomes getting support for those things...
Physical keyboards appeal to, besides those who just like to write a lot of text, also people who often need to SSH into a server and enter extended characters, or who run Emacs on their phone and want to easily use the power of packages like org-mode.
Combine that with my fat fingers that generally press 3-4 keys on my iphone at the same time I have to spend a lot of time erasing what I just wrote. A physical slide out keyboard would be great.
Yes! I love it. But when I'm typing in a morphologically complex language that has poor autocorrect coverage (dictionary too small), swipe typing is unpleasant. I hate swipe-less touch typing. Keyboard is right up my alley (though I'd love to see improvements in non-English autocorrect more).
I swiped the above and you can see the results.
What does this have to do with the market? People don't want physical keyboards because they are "used to" them. They want because the experience of typing is different.
Since those phones were current though, I've needed to switch to "normal" smartphones without physical keyboards. At first I really disliked them, but with practice, and especially with better swipe-capable keyboards, I got used to it.
Now, I don't know that I'd worry about going back. I'd rather have a phone with long-term software support.
1. You only speak one language, and never find yourself in a situation where you encounter transliterated foreign words or names.
2. You never use any obscure or technical words. No jargon or slang.
3. You also never find yourself in a situation where you have to come up with new terms and abbreviations.
4. You never use the keyboard for any notation other than prose. No code.
5. You agree 100% with the orthographic choices of whoever made your autocorrect.
Personal experience tells me that as a result anyone who has autocorrect on tends to be a boring conversation partner.
Yes, and that reason was "Apple did it and everyone else imitated them." There were other reasons too, having a keyboard on the phone itself like a Blackberry took up valuable screen real estate, and slide-outs made the phone ticker (when all manufacturers were crazy about making them thinner and thinner) and adds a mechanical point of failure. But other than that, it was largely trend-chasing.
ACTUAL MECHANICAL HAPTICS
vs
vibrating-slab-of-glass
vs
non-vibrating-slab-of-glass
cough yeah, have fun with your glass bricks
The cynic in me says: No one. Or as close to no one as possible: too few people. And too fickle people (enthusiasts are notorious for being fickle and changing their minds about tech every 5 minutes). We just won't notice anything as this product dies a silent death, a few months from now.
Commenters here seem to be focusing on the available OSes, but most flagship phones from a few years ago without a locked bootloader will run Lineage or Uubuntu Touch. FXtec's offering here is just that the bootloader won't be uncooperative.
The real killer feature is the keyboard. Those questioning the utility of a slide-out keyboard on a phone have obviously never used one. The speed and precision possible is miles ahead of an on-screen keyboard, plus there's all the extra screen real estate. While you can't touch type in the classic 4-fingers-on-home-row way, you certainly can learn to 'touch type' with your thumbs. Those who want proper touch typing can sit down in front of a Gemini, a slide-out keyboard excels at blasting out messages while standing on the metro.
There are plenty of us still holding onto our Motorola Photons and Droids (now so old the hardware is beginning to fail), blackberries (permanently locked bootloader) and Geminis (not a real phone, clamshell keyboard). For us, this is as close to the dream phone we've been waiting for as we'll likely ever see.
> swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well Last I checked, AnySoftKeyboard had the only FOSS implementation of swipe typing, and it wasn't very good. All the providers of decent swiping keyboards have a profit incentive to mine your data, and a keyboard that leaks information makes any other protections redundant.
The road for keyboard phones is long and winding.
The portrait sliders like Dell Venue Pro and BB Priv are the best IMHO. With glossy silver metal sides to protect the screen, mmmm.
Wild, I know.