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Comment by MattRix | Hacker News Reader

“physical beats glass any day”

evidence required

Personally I think they’re correct…for typing. For any other use case, I would much, much rather have the extra screen space that a keyboard would require to be removed. Regardless, if I need to do a lot of typing, I’d rather use a computer.

> For any other use case, I would much, much rather have the extra screen space that a keyboard would require to be removed.

I think Blackberry eventually hit the right formula with the Priv: Big full-body screen (including touch keyboard) most of the time, pkb to slide out when you really want to write something down. I'd say the same for the Keyone too, actually— Most phones are too tall to hold in one hand and read/use comfortably anyway, and having that slim keyboard along the bottom is really nice.

It's just a shame they did it about five years too late, and then didn't do very much else right about the phones. Slider Pkb+Stock-ish Android would have been great to see more of.

Does the lack of people using peripheral glass touchscreen keyboards on their PCs / laptops instead of physical keyboards count as evidence?

For typing without looking at the keyboard, of course physical is better. However once you’re already looking right near the keybord like on a phone, the advantages diminish. The main thing about a screen under glass is all the other stuff you can do with it. Changing the keyboard for emojis and different languages, or just getting rid of it entirely to free up screen real estate etc.

Direct, RCT is non-existent, emergent, or difficult at best.

My vote for off-topic, but close, and on point is something like this:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001048252...

I get flow on on my underpowered, by today's standards, cheaper than an iphone, left-field linux box on a daily basis.

Having switched Android and iPhone ecosystems every 2 years since the introduction of the G1, I've yet to see a single smart phone that could produce a flow experience for me, for exactly the same reasons everybody from Bret Victor to Alan Kay disparage regularly: tapping on glass is not the path to enlightenment, unlike the flow I get on hyprland.

Long story short, the sad backstory to the point that rubenerd makes about the crackberry is this:

Danger had this nailed with the HipTop not much past Y2K. That continued with the Sidekick II. I don't know the whole story, but somewhere in those years between 2003-2007, when I had stood in the Micro Center parking lot in Palo Alto gazing at Danger's headquarters with my Sidekick in hand thinking, "what the hell happened?", Andry Rubin exited stage left from Danger and began working on what would become Android.

The rest of it is the sad, sordid history we have now. One thing's certain though, I know many people, who'd go out and buy a sidekick tomorrow if macrohard, et al would just release the damn thing from its decades old, horribly common in the US, great-thing-killed-by-corporate-acquisition prison.

The HipTop and/or Sidkick deserved a better future than being killed in a series of acquisitions that pain everyone I know who experienced the device. It was ahead of its time, transformative, and had none of the issues that I've moaned about on everything up to and including my iPhone 12 mini and Pixel 6a.

Agreed! Back in the day, my colleague used his Sidekick and I used my Palm device to manage switches, routers, and all kinds of devices.

Thanks for your response.

This reminds me of doing updates via SSH on a train speeding across Philly ~2009 on the G1.

I'm curious what software enabled the device management? I worked on device management software in a few forms.

I’m positive GP doesn’t write in their phone in more than one language.

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