10 ms·

For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well. So much so that I use it regularly because of lazyness. What segment does

For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well. So much so that I use it regularly because of lazyness. 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?

rorykoehler 6y ago
Most of what I wrote makes no sense. The previous sentence has only one to be to get the just. I swiped the above and you can see the results.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dijit 6y ago
There are a cohort of people who abhor touchscreens for typing but there currently exists nothing that caters to them. 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)_/¯
blandflakes 6y ago
Honestly, I find that it works astonishingly poorly. Autocorrect is often wrong, sometimes showing the right thing milliseconds before second-guessing itself into a totally wrong word, so now I'm having to backspace because for some reason typing the actual letters I want is bad user interface. Agreed regarding target audience, though.
- antibuddy 6y ago
  I have a hybrid experience where I really need swipe to get things done fast, but I always disable autocorrect, because when I actually type I don't like to be corrected. This way I can put the anger on me rather than the software.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    I'm the same way. Nothing makes me want to throw a device through the wall like it autocorrecting me in a way I don't want. this is actually a reason I still use android phones even though I agree iphone probably has better security
- anotheryou 6y ago
  Apple? My swiftkey on android is sooo much better.
  - SamBam 6y ago
    I used Swype for a long time and loved it. 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.)
    - smichel17 6y ago
      Swype was killed? I still have and use it. It came preinstalled on my Galaxy S6.
      - ForHackernews 6y ago
        It was killed from the app store. Maybe it's still available to OEMs to preinstall on their devices. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17030216/nuance-discontinues-swype-keyboard https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17030216/nuance-discontin...
        LilBytes 6y ago
        Swype or at least the functionality behind it still exists with Swiftkey on Android.
- flatline 6y ago
  I turned off autocorrect years ago and never looked back. Sometimes I misspell a word but it’s better than typing a word slightly wrong and having a completely different word pop out. I’ll still use autocomplete sometimes to save some typing.
mulletbum 6y ago
I honestly found keyboards like this cumbersome because I can only use two fingers. I thought that was there reason we got away from them in the first place? Then haptic feedback made it so touching the screen feels better, but the original iPhone showed you didn't need a keyboard. I am so confused on who would buy this device.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  >I thought that was there reason we got away from them in the first place? 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.
- mlatu 6y ago
  > Then haptic feedback made it so touching the screen feels better ACTUAL MECHANICAL HAPTICS vs vibrating-slab-of-glass vs non-vibrating-slab-of-glass cough yeah, have fun with your glass bricks
  - GrinningFool 6y ago
    Once 'haptic' found its way into phone marketing, 'a slab of glass that vibrates when you touch it' quickly supplanted any more complete definition of the word in this context.
PH01 6y ago
What is your baseline for how good swipe typing is? 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.
- OGWhales 6y ago
  I almost never swipe type unless I am in bed with one hand. Otherwise, tap typing is what I prefer. I have sort of a weird grip but can type at about 80-90wpm on my phone with enough accuracy that autocorrect works the majority of the time. I can also type reasonably well under my desk without looking, but that would be much easier with physical buttons. Does everyone else swipe type now?
  - akalsz 6y ago
    > I have sort of a weird grip but can type at about 80-90wpm on my phone with enough accuracy that autocorrect works the majority of the time. I'm quite curious about your `weird grip'; 80-90 wpm on a touchscreen sounds absurdly fast.
    - comex 6y ago
      I can get around 75-80 WPM tap-typing on my iPhone. No weird grip. 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: https://a.qoid.us/typetest.html https://a.qoid.us/typetest.html
      - 6y ago
nochowder 6y ago
>What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to? Sysadmins, hackers, etc. Ever tried ”swipe typing coupled with autocorrect” in an SSH session?
- tifadg1 6y ago
  I just wonder how practical it really is to do any kind of meaningful sysadmin work on a phone. Yeah you can ssh and type long commands better, but if you're in an enterprise setting you have to vpn in, then connect to a jump server so you have ssh aliases and pki certs. Or have them ready on your phone, but how do you keep it up to date? What about auxiliary programs that are needed to make better decisions once ssh is established (monitoring)?.. I'm saying maybe it's legit, maybe I'm just oldfashioned.
  - dvdkon 6y ago
    Definitely not "true enterprise", but I have fixed server issues with my phone on a half-hour train ride. Back then I just used SSH password auth to connect to a server, so no security measures stopped me. Nowadays I'd probably wake up my home desktop and SSH into that and go from there.
- oblio 6y ago
  Yeah, but then I hope their OS is super optimized and runs like a demon on the Snapdragon 662. Most likely, if it's Android, at some point it will lag even while typing using that physical keyboard.
  - vimacs2 6y ago
    It's running Lineage OS which is pretty close to stock Android sans a lot of the invasive Google telemetry so it will probably run smoother than you would expect given the specs.
BossingAround 6y ago
> What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to? 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.
- reasonabl_human 6y ago
  Whoa... maybe it’s the jenky touchwiz software Samsung bundles on galaxies (if that’s still the case?). Try installing the default google keyboard and setting it as default. Back when I used android, the Google keyboard swipe capability was solid, this was on an LG G6 with some debloated vanilla android rom. 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...
  - shard 6y ago
    Different software keyboards definitely have different swiping requirements. I've found that Samsung swiping keyboards need sharper angles at direction changes to help with recognition. Other swiping keyboards are more okay with smooth continuous curves.
Swenrekcah 6y ago
First of all, there are other languages than English. 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.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in the cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands 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!
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    I guess someone has never been in a car crash. Or had to fix a problem on the train home after leaving work. Must be nice.
    - reasonabl_human 6y ago
      Emergency mode on an iPhone is activated with physical buttons. If I’m on the train leaving work, I have my laptop in my bag... This device is really interesting, but I agree that the product market fit is slim.
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        I can tell you from several unfortunate emergency experiences that you don’t just call 911. In fact if you are the one in the accident, it’s often the case that someone else calls 911 before you find your phone. What you do is call or text your family/coworkers/significant other/etc. I mean I won’t buy a phone just for this use case, but someone who routinely works in harsh environments might. 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.
iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
I often have a shell open on my phone, but far less often than I would if there were good options for typing. I'm very excited by the prospect.
oblio 6y ago
> So who's the target for this 900 usd device? 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.
rainingmonkey 6y ago
Everyone who remembers how much better phones with slide-out keyboards were. 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- uranium 6y ago
  This. I haven't seen a good phone with a 5-row keyboard since my first android phone, a G-1. Having that fifth row means that all the punctuation goes where you expect it to be, and you don't have to learn another key layout. I've been making do with swiping text since about 4 phones ago, but it makes typing on a phone painful and about 10x slower. So far I've had to correct about 3 words per sentence. I can't wait to be able to order this phone!
  - Snitch-Thursday 6y ago
    G1, G2, Droid, Droid 2, Droid 4, Photon Q, Dell Venue Pro (windows phone), Priv, Pro1. 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.
maxsilver 6y ago
You can have both, with no drawbacks. 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.
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Yes, plus not losing 1/2 the screen to an on-screen keyboard. Was almost pure android, incredibly secure. Blackberry got it right, then bailed.
  - studog 6y ago
    Ex-Blackberry here. BB didn't bail; not enough people were buying the phones for hardware manufacturing to be self-sustainable.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      Yes, but, you cannot build a new brand in a couple of years. If you look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see the Priv, the first all android Blackberry, was released in 2015, and they bailed in late 2016. 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.
      - bbarnett 6y ago
        What really got me, was how much people I showed the Priv to, and the slide out keyboard loved it. 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.
ilovetux 6y ago
I have been waiting for a phone like this since I had a Samsung Captivate Glide [0] in 2011. The fact that it can come with Linux preinstalled is a huge bonus for me. 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Captivate_Glide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Captivate_Glide
dmos62 6y ago
> For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well. 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).
s_fischer 6y ago
They probably aren't the designed target market but I wonder if a physical keyboard would be easier to use for the vision impaired. Especially with the ridges on the home keys, they could rely less on the audio feedback experience of glass screen keyboards
aceazzameen 6y ago
This targets me exactly! Well, sort of. The original Moto Droid was my first Android device, and I loved the slide out physical keyboard (paired with SwiftKey prediction and autocorrect!). It was the best of both worlds. I miss that typing experience. 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.
- rjzzleep 6y ago
  Yeah, no idea how that happened. 662 is an early 2020 11nm midrange SoC. For comparison the 1.5 year older Apple A12 is twice as fast. Considering the price point I'd rather pay an extra 200 dollars and buy a 7" One Mix laptop.
- RHSeeger 6y ago
  I miss my Droid keyboard. It was so much more convenient than the current screen keyboards, even with swipe. Swipe + auto-correct gets every 3rd word wrong for me.
tubularhells 6y ago
Imagine a world where some people speak more than one language on a daily basis. Wild, I know.
crocsarecool 6y ago
I’ve actually heard people with certain handicaps find they can type better with the physical keyboard. I’m not sure what those handicaps are - I read it a long time ago. I think one thing may have been poor eyesight and being able to feel the keys helped aid them.
tyfon 6y ago
It targets me since my hands are way too fat and I need to type Norwegian. None of the keyboards from apple (who doesn't even have swipe in Norwegian), google or microsoft supports compound words. 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.
Yizahi 6y ago
I have yet to see an even half working autocorrect on phone (even in English). I'm using Samsung S10P and when typing autocorrect can't correct even a simple 1 character typos (e.g. "cha4acter" or "5ypo"). Also trying to put a cursor in the desired place happens usually only after several tries.
- throwaway744678 6y ago
  For the cursor part, most keyboard allow precise cursor movements by swiping the space bar.
  - goodusername 6y ago
    Wow,i never realized you could do that, such a game changer! Thanks for the tip.
lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
If you can't type on an actual keyboard, touchscreen typing is barely a downgrade from hunting and pecking. If you can type quickly, touchscreen typing is really fucking awful.
alpaca128 6y ago
> For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well. 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).
andagainagain 6y ago
swipe typing is great until you fudge it just a little bit. Then it gets hilarious horrible really fast.
solatic 6y ago
I bought a Pro1, their first-gen model. Termux had packages for both vim, kubectl, and the Teleport client binary (tsh). Unfortunately, it didn't work because Termux refused (refuses?) to run within the Android work profile, but if it did, it would have permitted running kubectl commands - checking status, restarting deployments, scaling deployments, etc., all from the phone in your pocket. 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.
legohead 6y ago
I used swype up to a few years ago, and now I use speech to text all the time. It isn't perfect, and for some reason loves to confuse pronouns (I becomes HE, why Google?). But it's ease of use and speed is unmatched. 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...
imhoguy 6y ago
Think thin-client. I do on-call duty often, having entire smartphone screen available for terminal/remote desktop plus hw keyboard is priceless. No need to carry a laptop everywhere I go, esp. outdoor and during trips. 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.
spazx 6y ago
I'm 25 - I loved qwerty physical keyboards on those "texting phones" from the late 2000s. The Sidekick, the enV, the Octane, etc. To me, as a kid, it looked like a small laptop, and I wanted to run real applications on it and use the web. I was very fast on that little keyboard, too. When I got my first smartphone, it took me awhile to get used to it. I can't type without the tactile feedback, and I don't like using the terminal on a touch keyboard. Adding that I'm a nerd for pocket computers in general, I guess I'm the target audience.
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
> born and raised touching the screen 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.
- ansible 6y ago
  I would have bought this style of phone 8 or 9 years ago. I had the original G1 (actually the ADP1) and Samsung Sidekick 4G, and loved the keyboards on those phones. With some practice, I could get close to 30 wpm on the keyboards. 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.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
If typing on a screen was really as enjoyable and productive as a keyboard, we wouldn't see the enormous collapse in long-form text blogging over the last decade in favor of just uploading images with a much smaller amount of text. 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.
rchaud 6y ago
Probably the people that bought the previous Android iteration of this, the FxTec Pro 1 from 2019.
knolax 6y ago
IMO autocorrect only works well if all of the following are true: 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.

rorykoehler 6y ago

Most of what I wrote makes no sense. The previous sentence has only one to be to get the just. I swiped the above and you can see the results.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dijit 6y ago

There are a cohort of people who abhor touchscreens for typing but there currently exists nothing that caters to them. 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)_/¯

blandflakes 6y ago

Honestly, I find that it works astonishingly poorly. Autocorrect is often wrong, sometimes showing the right thing milliseconds before second-guessing itself into a totally wrong word, so now I'm having to backspace because for some reason typing the actual letters I want is bad user interface. Agreed regarding target audience, though.

antibuddy 6y ago
I have a hybrid experience where I really need swipe to get things done fast, but I always disable autocorrect, because when I actually type I don't like to be corrected. This way I can put the anger on me rather than the software.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  I'm the same way. Nothing makes me want to throw a device through the wall like it autocorrecting me in a way I don't want. this is actually a reason I still use android phones even though I agree iphone probably has better security
anotheryou 6y ago
Apple? My swiftkey on android is sooo much better.
- SamBam 6y ago
  I used Swype for a long time and loved it. 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.)
  - smichel17 6y ago
    Swype was killed? I still have and use it. It came preinstalled on my Galaxy S6.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      It was killed from the app store. Maybe it's still available to OEMs to preinstall on their devices. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17030216/nuance-discontinues-swype-keyboard https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17030216/nuance-discontin...
      - LilBytes 6y ago
        Swype or at least the functionality behind it still exists with Swiftkey on Android.
flatline 6y ago
I turned off autocorrect years ago and never looked back. Sometimes I misspell a word but it’s better than typing a word slightly wrong and having a completely different word pop out. I’ll still use autocomplete sometimes to save some typing.

mulletbum 6y ago

I honestly found keyboards like this cumbersome because I can only use two fingers. I thought that was there reason we got away from them in the first place? Then haptic feedback made it so touching the screen feels better, but the original iPhone showed you didn't need a keyboard. I am so confused on who would buy this device.

HideousKojima 6y ago
>I thought that was there reason we got away from them in the first place? 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.
mlatu 6y ago
> Then haptic feedback made it so touching the screen feels better ACTUAL MECHANICAL HAPTICS vs vibrating-slab-of-glass vs non-vibrating-slab-of-glass cough yeah, have fun with your glass bricks
- GrinningFool 6y ago
  Once 'haptic' found its way into phone marketing, 'a slab of glass that vibrates when you touch it' quickly supplanted any more complete definition of the word in this context.

PH01 6y ago

What is your baseline for how good swipe typing is? 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.

OGWhales 6y ago
I almost never swipe type unless I am in bed with one hand. Otherwise, tap typing is what I prefer. I have sort of a weird grip but can type at about 80-90wpm on my phone with enough accuracy that autocorrect works the majority of the time. I can also type reasonably well under my desk without looking, but that would be much easier with physical buttons. Does everyone else swipe type now?
- akalsz 6y ago
  > I have sort of a weird grip but can type at about 80-90wpm on my phone with enough accuracy that autocorrect works the majority of the time. I'm quite curious about your `weird grip'; 80-90 wpm on a touchscreen sounds absurdly fast.
  - comex 6y ago
    I can get around 75-80 WPM tap-typing on my iPhone. No weird grip. 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: https://a.qoid.us/typetest.html https://a.qoid.us/typetest.html
    - 6y ago

nochowder 6y ago

>What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to? Sysadmins, hackers, etc. Ever tried ”swipe typing coupled with autocorrect” in an SSH session?

tifadg1 6y ago
I just wonder how practical it really is to do any kind of meaningful sysadmin work on a phone. Yeah you can ssh and type long commands better, but if you're in an enterprise setting you have to vpn in, then connect to a jump server so you have ssh aliases and pki certs. Or have them ready on your phone, but how do you keep it up to date? What about auxiliary programs that are needed to make better decisions once ssh is established (monitoring)?.. I'm saying maybe it's legit, maybe I'm just oldfashioned.
- dvdkon 6y ago
  Definitely not "true enterprise", but I have fixed server issues with my phone on a half-hour train ride. Back then I just used SSH password auth to connect to a server, so no security measures stopped me. Nowadays I'd probably wake up my home desktop and SSH into that and go from there.
oblio 6y ago
Yeah, but then I hope their OS is super optimized and runs like a demon on the Snapdragon 662. Most likely, if it's Android, at some point it will lag even while typing using that physical keyboard.
- vimacs2 6y ago
  It's running Lineage OS which is pretty close to stock Android sans a lot of the invasive Google telemetry so it will probably run smoother than you would expect given the specs.

BossingAround 6y ago

> What segment does the physical keyboard appeal to? 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.

reasonabl_human 6y ago
Whoa... maybe it’s the jenky touchwiz software Samsung bundles on galaxies (if that’s still the case?). Try installing the default google keyboard and setting it as default. Back when I used android, the Google keyboard swipe capability was solid, this was on an LG G6 with some debloated vanilla android rom. 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...
- shard 6y ago
  Different software keyboards definitely have different swiping requirements. I've found that Samsung swiping keyboards need sharper angles at direction changes to help with recognition. Other swiping keyboards are more okay with smooth continuous curves.

Swenrekcah 6y ago

First of all, there are other languages than English. 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.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in the cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands 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!
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  I guess someone has never been in a car crash. Or had to fix a problem on the train home after leaving work. Must be nice.
  - reasonabl_human 6y ago
    Emergency mode on an iPhone is activated with physical buttons. If I’m on the train leaving work, I have my laptop in my bag... This device is really interesting, but I agree that the product market fit is slim.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      I can tell you from several unfortunate emergency experiences that you don’t just call 911. In fact if you are the one in the accident, it’s often the case that someone else calls 911 before you find your phone. What you do is call or text your family/coworkers/significant other/etc. I mean I won’t buy a phone just for this use case, but someone who routinely works in harsh environments might. 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.

iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago

I often have a shell open on my phone, but far less often than I would if there were good options for typing. I'm very excited by the prospect.

oblio 6y ago

> So who's the target for this 900 usd device? 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.

rainingmonkey 6y ago

Everyone who remembers how much better phones with slide-out keyboards were. 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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
uranium 6y ago
This. I haven't seen a good phone with a 5-row keyboard since my first android phone, a G-1. Having that fifth row means that all the punctuation goes where you expect it to be, and you don't have to learn another key layout. I've been making do with swiping text since about 4 phones ago, but it makes typing on a phone painful and about 10x slower. So far I've had to correct about 3 words per sentence. I can't wait to be able to order this phone!
- Snitch-Thursday 6y ago
  G1, G2, Droid, Droid 2, Droid 4, Photon Q, Dell Venue Pro (windows phone), Priv, Pro1. 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.

maxsilver 6y ago

You can have both, with no drawbacks. 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.

bbarnett 6y ago
Yes, plus not losing 1/2 the screen to an on-screen keyboard. Was almost pure android, incredibly secure. Blackberry got it right, then bailed.
- studog 6y ago
  Ex-Blackberry here. BB didn't bail; not enough people were buying the phones for hardware manufacturing to be self-sustainable.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    Yes, but, you cannot build a new brand in a couple of years. If you look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see the Priv, the first all android Blackberry, was released in 2015, and they bailed in late 2016. 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.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      What really got me, was how much people I showed the Priv to, and the slide out keyboard loved it. 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.

ilovetux 6y ago

I have been waiting for a phone like this since I had a Samsung Captivate Glide [0] in 2011. The fact that it can come with Linux preinstalled is a huge bonus for me. 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Captivate_Glide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Captivate_Glide

dmos62 6y ago

> For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well. 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).

s_fischer 6y ago

They probably aren't the designed target market but I wonder if a physical keyboard would be easier to use for the vision impaired. Especially with the ridges on the home keys, they could rely less on the audio feedback experience of glass screen keyboards

aceazzameen 6y ago

This targets me exactly! Well, sort of. The original Moto Droid was my first Android device, and I loved the slide out physical keyboard (paired with SwiftKey prediction and autocorrect!). It was the best of both worlds. I miss that typing experience. 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.

rjzzleep 6y ago
Yeah, no idea how that happened. 662 is an early 2020 11nm midrange SoC. For comparison the 1.5 year older Apple A12 is twice as fast. Considering the price point I'd rather pay an extra 200 dollars and buy a 7" One Mix laptop.
RHSeeger 6y ago
I miss my Droid keyboard. It was so much more convenient than the current screen keyboards, even with swipe. Swipe + auto-correct gets every 3rd word wrong for me.

tubularhells 6y ago

Imagine a world where some people speak more than one language on a daily basis. Wild, I know.

crocsarecool 6y ago

I’ve actually heard people with certain handicaps find they can type better with the physical keyboard. I’m not sure what those handicaps are - I read it a long time ago. I think one thing may have been poor eyesight and being able to feel the keys helped aid them.

tyfon 6y ago

It targets me since my hands are way too fat and I need to type Norwegian. None of the keyboards from apple (who doesn't even have swipe in Norwegian), google or microsoft supports compound words. 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.

Yizahi 6y ago

I have yet to see an even half working autocorrect on phone (even in English). I'm using Samsung S10P and when typing autocorrect can't correct even a simple 1 character typos (e.g. "cha4acter" or "5ypo"). Also trying to put a cursor in the desired place happens usually only after several tries.

throwaway744678 6y ago
For the cursor part, most keyboard allow precise cursor movements by swiping the space bar.
- goodusername 6y ago
  Wow,i never realized you could do that, such a game changer! Thanks for the tip.

lawtalkinghuman 6y ago

If you can't type on an actual keyboard, touchscreen typing is barely a downgrade from hunting and pecking. If you can type quickly, touchscreen typing is really fucking awful.

alpaca128 6y ago

> For english language, swipe typing coupled with autocorrect works astonishingly well. 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).

andagainagain 6y ago

swipe typing is great until you fudge it just a little bit. Then it gets hilarious horrible really fast.

solatic 6y ago

I bought a Pro1, their first-gen model. Termux had packages for both vim, kubectl, and the Teleport client binary (tsh). Unfortunately, it didn't work because Termux refused (refuses?) to run within the Android work profile, but if it did, it would have permitted running kubectl commands - checking status, restarting deployments, scaling deployments, etc., all from the phone in your pocket. 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.

legohead 6y ago

I used swype up to a few years ago, and now I use speech to text all the time. It isn't perfect, and for some reason loves to confuse pronouns (I becomes HE, why Google?). But it's ease of use and speed is unmatched. 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...

imhoguy 6y ago

Think thin-client. I do on-call duty often, having entire smartphone screen available for terminal/remote desktop plus hw keyboard is priceless. No need to carry a laptop everywhere I go, esp. outdoor and during trips. 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.

spazx 6y ago

I'm 25 - I loved qwerty physical keyboards on those "texting phones" from the late 2000s. The Sidekick, the enV, the Octane, etc. To me, as a kid, it looked like a small laptop, and I wanted to run real applications on it and use the web. I was very fast on that little keyboard, too. When I got my first smartphone, it took me awhile to get used to it. I can't type without the tactile feedback, and I don't like using the terminal on a touch keyboard. Adding that I'm a nerd for pocket computers in general, I guess I'm the target audience.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

> born and raised touching the screen 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.

ansible 6y ago
I would have bought this style of phone 8 or 9 years ago. I had the original G1 (actually the ADP1) and Samsung Sidekick 4G, and loved the keyboards on those phones. With some practice, I could get close to 30 wpm on the keyboards. 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.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

If typing on a screen was really as enjoyable and productive as a keyboard, we wouldn't see the enormous collapse in long-form text blogging over the last decade in favor of just uploading images with a much smaller amount of text. 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.

rchaud 6y ago

Probably the people that bought the previous Android iteration of this, the FxTec Pro 1 from 2019.

knolax 6y ago

IMO autocorrect only works well if all of the following are true: 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.