Hacker News Reader

Comment by Martha02 | Hacker News Reader

I miss physical keyboards, like those on BlackBerry devices. Honestly, I think SSHing into Claude Code from a phone with a physical keyboard would actually be a decent choice for vibe coding today. But maybe I just want a 12-inch M-chip MacBook

View on HN

I was hoping devices like this (https://www.fxtec.com/smartphones/pro1x) would catch on, but I think people have given up physical keyboards.

(obviously flip out phones have a lot of moving parts to get damaged)

I've had this phone as my main device for half a year and now using a Pixel 9 Pro Fold sometimes in "laptop" folded mode. So far, neither of these devices come close in my typing speed to a proper keyboard. The F(x)tec was great though because you do get all special characters in tactile buttons; on the Fold I constantly need to check my keyboard and make sure I'm writing what I think I'm writing. And, it's a shame that the space in between letters on the 'Gboard' keyboard on the Fold remains unused, when it could've been a perfect mouse trackpad.

I think the ideal form factor for a proper development phone would be the Astro Slide (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...) – I haven't personally used it but I can imagine it's the smallest size possible for proper two-handed typing. The F(x)tec was a two-thumber instead.

The Fxtec is so damn cool if you can get your hands on one. It can actually straight up run Debian. I also managed to run VS Code on it natively via Termux.

I also had a Gemini PDA, which is basically the Psion 5mx keyboard glued to a shitty Android smartphone. Such a nice keyboard, but such mediocre and unsupported CPU...

@levelsio was posting about this last week: https://x.com/levelsio/status/1953022273595506910. Haven't tested it out yet, but it seems like a cool way to continue hacking away at a project while on the go.

It should have a voice controlled way in that case, at least that is my point oof view on towards all clusmy chat bot interfaces, AI usage should be transparent.

Did you try Pinephone with the keyboard?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com