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Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

There's no free lunch, and it's easy to overlook the compromises involved in the devices that used to have physical keyboards. By modern standards, blackberrys had a woefully small screen and phones with slideout keyboards were very fat. This device doesn't look fat which suggests to me that the compromise might be either battery life or low processor power.

That said, although this is definitely not for me, it's generally good for the market to have some devices that are genuinely different rather than just another "me too" Samsung/iphone lookalike.

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It's kind of crazy to me that people are concerned about the thickness of phones, yet nobody bats an eye when they keep getting bigger and bigger in the other dimensions. I guess screen size trumps all other concerns.

It's to do with pockets, at a guess. There's no penalty for expanding in the height and width dimensions up to the limits of a back pocket, which is comparatively huge.

If you expand in the depth direction, the pocket can't expand far before it starts to feel uncomfortable, particularly if you sit on it.

People sit on their phones?

People put phones in their back pockets?

Yes.

I put my phone in my front pocket. My front pocket can accommodate reasonably thick items like my wallet, but if they're too wide and long, it interferes with my ability to bend at the waist.

Keys and change go in front pockets. Things with screens don't go in those pockets.

Keys in my left pocket, phone in my right.

It might be local clothing design, but I haven't seen a back pocket so low that you could actually sit on a phone.

The geometry works out that the pocket is halfway from your back and your leg, so when you sit the phone would be at a 45 degree angle.

Half of it would be under compression from your weight in the horizontal direction, and the other would be in tension from the pocket pulling it into the vertical direction.

Not a healthy situation for your comfort, your phone's integrity, and the pocket's half-life, regardless of a phone's dimensions. In fact, a larger surface-area phone would work even more as a lever than a vaguely thicker one.

So I just put the phone in the front pockets.

I didn't suggest it was a good place to put it, just that people do.

Right. My Palm Pre fit in my pocket better than any modern smartphone where almost all models are starting to push a 6" diagonal. The corner invariably digs into my hip when I sit down.

For women it matters less since pockets in women's clothing are a joke

Same here. It's near impossible to get a <5" phone nowadays, and everything else is too big for me. I really really liked my Pre3, maybe I'll just start using it again when my Samsung A3 finally dies :)

It is really fat: about 14mm, nearly twice as thick as most current phones.

And that's without a case! I can't even imagine what a case would start to look like for this thing. It would be its own feat of engineering...

Then again, if you're always holding it with two hands, who needs a case, right? :þ

Half-height, allowing the screen to slide out? Probably with a separate one with 4-corner shock bumpers on the screen.

Or a zip-lock bag. Which would also make it waterproof!

It's thin, light, when inflated it provides excellent protection, why doesn't everyone carry their phones in a sandwich bag?

Some of us still use wired headphones!

A completely removable sleeve is more useful for such a phone imo

It does look like two phones. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to make it actually two phones (or separate phone-sized devices), so you can use the touchscreen part as a phone, and have the other part be a pluggable keyboard + powerbank.

The textblade (https://waytools.com/ ) would be the ideal form factor in my mind. Unfortunately, it has been 6 years since they said they were going to release it though there have been people (testers) using it for real for several years.

If it's not released it's pretty suspicious that they let you buy one without mentioning that.

edit: this thing looks like a total scam. Announced as being 12 weeks out in 2015, taking orders, and still not released in April 2021, yet still taking orders? That's more than a blown deadline at this point. They're lucky they haven't seen legal action.

I saw the Textblade the first day it appeared on HN and I still droll over it. It's a real shame the company has been so shady (and they were from the start). I would really love for someone to clone it and actually bring it to market.

Issue with separate devices is now half the time I won't be carrying the keyboard because it's extra optional bulk. Also the connection would probably be much crappier meaning the form factor won't be as convenient, the keyboard being part of the phone means they're pretty well connected where the two separate pieces version doesn't have one.

I don’t mind more thick than current phones. There’s absolutely no reason to think every user has the same demands for form factors. Just like some people would only ever buy a truck and others sedans.

I don't get the use case for thin phones, and believe it's just marketing-driven preference. We're told thin phones are better over and over, and slowly the market starts to believe it because the message is saturated and there's no counter-message to it.

It couldn't be that thick phones are heavier to carry around. The difference between a 8mm phone and a 16mm phone couldn't be more than 200 grams or so. That's making you sweat as you carry it? It couldn't be that it's tough to hold up to your ear. My Nokia 7210 was probably one of my best phones ever and it was by today's standards a thick brick. Google tells me it was a whopping 17.5mm thick. So what is it? What practical benefit do you get from a thin phone? The only thing I can think of is the ability to carry it stealthily in your pocket, but is that really the driving use case?

It really depends if it needs a case or not, my note10+ feels fine with a case and almost too thin when the case is off

I agree. My Pixel 3 feels great in my pocket, but it's too thin and slippery in the hand. My case is for comfort as much as its a precaution!

That's the thickness of the original Motorola Droid, which was comfortable imo, I loved that phone.

Although the display is bigger on this Pro1X, I don't think it would be that uncomfortable to use, as the times of being able to grip the phone by both sides with one hand are long past. The way I hold them now is by having 4 fingers behind and praying it doesn't slip, I guess.

That's about as thick as most phones with a "Tuf" case.

I own one. Mine feels no thicker than the Samsung Galaxy in a case. As long as it perceptually feels more or less like a box of playing cards, I'm not worried about thickness.

The HTC Dream was 17.1mm thick. That was a nice size because you could thumb it open with one hand. It also had a decent keyboard with tactile feedback. I'm not sure anyone wants a clicky-clicky mechanical keyboard on a phone but I doubt they want a sea of dead chiclets either. So some thickness given over to key travel and click is IMHO perfectly fine.

This is such a pointlessly negative comment. Not all phones are designed for you personally, and what you perceive as a "compromise" can be a selling point for someone else.

My favorite keyboard phone was the Blackberry Passport. It had a 1:1 4.5in screen, and a physical keyboard with capacitive sensors on it so that you could scroll by swiping your thumb on the keyboard rather than the screen (among many other useful gestures).

IMO that's the best form-factor for a phone ever. Peak productivity and excellent build quality, a great screen, and a perfect size. The only problem was that it came from a doomed company.

Maybe you think the 4.5in screen is a "compromise", or the 1:1 aspect ratio, or the shape of the device (exact dimensions of an actual passport). All of those were things were why I loved the phone so much.

It's just a shame it came from a doomed company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Passport

The Unihertz Titan could be described as a spiritual successor to the BlackBerry Passport: similar form factor, rugged build quality and long battery life, but runs Android 10. I'm typing on one right now.

I don't like using phones without a case because they're too thin for me. I get cramps.

So thickness wouldn't be an issue for me. I hope I'm not the only one.

I've used its predecessor the Pro1 with Sailfish OS for 4 weeks. (While having fond memories of using my Nokia Communicator in the past for SSHing into servers to fix things.)

For me, the compromises were not worth it. The phone is too clunky and heavy and virtual keyboards are good enough these days.

> For me, the compromises were not worth it. The phone is too clunky and heavy and virtual keyboards are good enough these days.

There are compromises like I said in previous posts. Frankly I love the physical keyboard not for long form text, but for my terminal operations or just plain old character-by-character cut/copy/paste edits in text. If there were a virtual Ctrl key on my on screen keyboard so I could do Ctrl + V, then maybe I would swap to something else too, but for now this fxtec takes the mobile cake for anything more than a 7 word swype reply to a text.

>If there were a virtual Ctrl key on my on screen keyboard so I could do Ctrl + V, then maybe I would swap to something else too

Hacker's Keyboard and AnySoftKeyboard have this. Also, Termux can add these keys above your keyboard for terminal tasks at least.

> and virtual keyboards are good enough these days

Good ebought for what, a quick comment on HN?

I made four onscreen errors just typing that first sentence because my fingers weren't perfectly centred on the pretend keys. And look, Gboard has no idea how to correct ebought.

IMO the Nokia E7 was the perfect phone in all dimensions. Modern phones are impractically large. Man, I'd love to see some innovation in phone design. How did we go so far backwards?

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