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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 phone
by 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 agoThis. 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 agoG1, 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.
- abcanthur 6y agoI have long yearned for the sliding keyboards of yore; better touch typing, adds some articulation and yes, size, to phones that are too small and smooth for many hands, all while preserving screen real estate from onscreen keyboards AND visual obstruction from our moving fingers. To this last point, I have given up on physical keyboards returning to phones, but why can't we have a physical scroll wheel on the side? Handles so many use screentime use cases (infinite scroll...), unobstrusive, precise, piggybacks on accessibility UIs, etc. Early ipods were all scroll wheel, and there is great versatility in the clicking and smooth-vs-stepped modes of modern mouse scroll wheels. If we haven't gotten a decent keyboard in any device for years, at least give us a wheel!! Touch screens are like wearing cheap cellophane gloves, this is why nobody looks cool while using their smartphone, because there is no possibility of virtuosity in the dead, time lagged UI.