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I sure wouldn't pay money for something that can't run a browser. Such a device would probably not be any better than a $20 flip phone from eBay. They still m

I sure wouldn't pay money for something that can't run a browser. Such a device would probably not be any better than a $20 flip phone from eBay. They still make them.

mindslight 5y ago
Can you really not imagine any application without the bloat of a web browser, that wasn't on flip phones? Have you never gotten used to muscle memory to control a curses app? I used to develop interfaces for 5 MIPS PIC microcontrollers that were more responsive than 98% of today's consumer market. When I'm on the go, the last thing I want to be doing is waiting for UI lag from too many layers of frameworks running on a low power processor, never mind the poor battery life.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  The modern web is very unlikely to go away. And we use the internet for everything these days. Why would I want the risk of being caught an hour from home, suddenly needing to do something that can only be done on a browser? They'd have to rely so much on individual apps for everything, but without layers of frameworks, the apps might not exist, because it would cost more to make them, and there might be fewer programmers in the world without those frameworks making it easy. Making non browser phones useful would require really big change to the whole mobile ecosystem, or else phones could no longer serve their present role as do-everything devices. I only know about 3 ncurses type TUI apps(No idea if they're actually ncurses under the hood). Nano, nmtui, and a demo test app I built for developing plugins. I don't use any of them unless I'm SSHed into things, because tech has reached the good enough point where even Electron apps are pretty snappy on an SSD.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  As owner of a Sony CMD J5, I am pretty sure a browser has been there on such phones for quite some time, even if they could only see WAP pages.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Sure, but you know that's completely orthogonal to what I'm saying. There is a big difference between a WAP browser and the webapp runtime we now call a browser. The latter replaces purpose-developed apps running primarily off local storage with ever-present client-server latency, best-effort presentation, and attention-required input for every single interaction. In fact I'd say the early WAP browser is closer to an example of the type of lean, discrete-button-press-controlled application I'm advocating than the touchscreen "browser" of today. And sure a full contemporary browser comes in handy in a pinch, but thinking it suffices for routine everyday tasks on a small form device is terrible engineering.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Although most of my work is Web development related, I also share the same opinion, we should have stayed with HTML 4 and do everything else with native apps and networking protocols. Unfortunely only a couple of water drops in this ocean share this opinion.
    - eternityforest 5y ago
      I like the touchscreen model a LOT more than the old button model. There's one specific category of things that would be very well suited to a non-browser device, and that's IoT control, where you want something cheap enough to leave several around the house, drop-proof, with physical buttons. But the ideal for that would be more like a calculator with Wi-Fi and rotary encoders than a phone. Webapps could very easily be local first if they would hurry up and give us a non-nerfed(By certificate expiration) version of Signed Web Bundles. Chrome OS had a great idea with real local apps without as much web sandboxing, but developed with web tech to make them very easy to develop.

I sure wouldn't pay money for something that can't run a browser. Such a device would probably not be any better than a $20 flip phone from eBay. They still make them.

mindslight 5y ago

Can you really not imagine any application without the bloat of a web browser, that wasn't on flip phones? Have you never gotten used to muscle memory to control a curses app? I used to develop interfaces for 5 MIPS PIC microcontrollers that were more responsive than 98% of today's consumer market. When I'm on the go, the last thing I want to be doing is waiting for UI lag from too many layers of frameworks running on a low power processor, never mind the poor battery life.

eternityforest 5y ago
The modern web is very unlikely to go away. And we use the internet for everything these days. Why would I want the risk of being caught an hour from home, suddenly needing to do something that can only be done on a browser? They'd have to rely so much on individual apps for everything, but without layers of frameworks, the apps might not exist, because it would cost more to make them, and there might be fewer programmers in the world without those frameworks making it easy. Making non browser phones useful would require really big change to the whole mobile ecosystem, or else phones could no longer serve their present role as do-everything devices. I only know about 3 ncurses type TUI apps(No idea if they're actually ncurses under the hood). Nano, nmtui, and a demo test app I built for developing plugins. I don't use any of them unless I'm SSHed into things, because tech has reached the good enough point where even Electron apps are pretty snappy on an SSD.
pjmlp 5y ago
As owner of a Sony CMD J5, I am pretty sure a browser has been there on such phones for quite some time, even if they could only see WAP pages.
- mindslight 5y ago
  Sure, but you know that's completely orthogonal to what I'm saying. There is a big difference between a WAP browser and the webapp runtime we now call a browser. The latter replaces purpose-developed apps running primarily off local storage with ever-present client-server latency, best-effort presentation, and attention-required input for every single interaction. In fact I'd say the early WAP browser is closer to an example of the type of lean, discrete-button-press-controlled application I'm advocating than the touchscreen "browser" of today. And sure a full contemporary browser comes in handy in a pinch, but thinking it suffices for routine everyday tasks on a small form device is terrible engineering.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Although most of my work is Web development related, I also share the same opinion, we should have stayed with HTML 4 and do everything else with native apps and networking protocols. Unfortunely only a couple of water drops in this ocean share this opinion.
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    I like the touchscreen model a LOT more than the old button model. There's one specific category of things that would be very well suited to a non-browser device, and that's IoT control, where you want something cheap enough to leave several around the house, drop-proof, with physical buttons. But the ideal for that would be more like a calculator with Wi-Fi and rotary encoders than a phone. Webapps could very easily be local first if they would hurry up and give us a non-nerfed(By certificate expiration) version of Signed Web Bundles. Chrome OS had a great idea with real local apps without as much web sandboxing, but developed with web tech to make them very easy to develop.