Hacker News Reader

Comment by VVertigo | Hacker News Reader

I used a Blackberry Classic up until last year when my provider dropped 3G coverage. It's probably a good thing as I never got phone addiction since the browser was unusable and didn't have the apps. I did get in the habit of carrying an iPad with me though for that: but at least then you only pull it out when necessary. I might have to check out the Zinwa retrofit kits mentioned in the article: I do miss the hardware keyboard when using the Android I replaced it with.

The Pinephone with the keyboard accessory was tempting too, but the software readiness (and older hardware) didn't seem practical as a daily driver.

View on HN

My Zinwa (full-device, not kit) BlackBerry actually showed up, and has been my daily for several weeks. It's fantastic, and I adore it. I love the trackpad, and use it for scrolling and cursor-placement in text daily. The keyboard is an actual, honest-to-god RIM keyboard, and it feels like it. Batteries have gotten denser, but the screen is still small, and I ditched GApps - so my battery life is measured in days.

To temper expectations though: the screen ratio doesn't always work perfectly with apps, getting Google Pay can apparently be a challenge, and the LineageOS build is imperfect (though fixes have been sent, and I expect it to get better).

Should anyone pick one up, mind the antenna resistors when using the SIM removal tool - it's possible to bump them, and they'll have to be soldered back to the board for WiFi and GPS to work correctly after.

Overall, it was cheap enough [0] that I jumped on it early, and it's gone well enough that if the Q10 revival happens, I'm buying a full device and a spare mainboard immediately.

[0] Initially there were two sets of specs, and I bought the lower-end one. Later on, to simplify production, Zinwa bumped everyone to the Pro version at no extra cost.

Did you do any typing speed tests against friends using other mobile solutions?

I've found Swype to be reasonably quick (and the learning curve isn't too steep).

However I never had a chance to race a really competent Blackberry user.

I'm probably pretty far out on the normal mobile user curve: my phone is primarily used for phone calls along with some texting and I don't even have a data plan.

I would suspect many mobile users would be faster than me (I know people who can go astonishingly fast), although I can (or at least used to be able to) type much faster on the BB keyboard than my phone screen. I am a decent typist though, so for most communication over a sentence I will resort to email using a desktop or laptop. I hate typing on laptop keyboards though and use an external one. I'm also not a fan of a bunch of back and forth texting, so for conversations like that it's usually better resolved with a call.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com