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The Facebook Portal (2018-22) was the greatest home videophone. When it came out, I was living in a different country than the rest of our extended family. We
by pavlov 4y ago
The Facebook Portal (2018-22) was the greatest home videophone.
When it came out, I was living in a different country than the rest of our extended family. We got three Portals for Christmas: one for us, one for each of the grandparents. All of us still use the devices regularly to call other as well as other people.
The UI is grandma- and kid-friendly with big clear buttons and nothing extra. The camera is very good for family video calls because it’s a fisheye that’s digitally cropped and corrected to provide automatic pan and zoom. The kids can run to the other end of the room, and the Portal will automatically follow them and crop the image neatly.
The Facebook brand probably did it no favors, and they really dropped the ball during Covid by not having Zoom available until very late in the game.
RIP sweet dedicated family videophone. With how much money Meta lost on this, I don’t suppose anyone will try again anytime soon.
- newsclues 4y agoMy mom struggles with FaceTime apps, and a FaceTime appliance would solve those issues for her.
- Spooky23 4y agoMy cousins use it in their family and love the product. It’s funny though that my aunt saw it at an Amazon store in the Mall, went to Apple Store to see if they had one, then went back and bought like 9 portals. It boggles the mind that there isn’t a FaceTime video unit!
- clan 4y agoWe went with the Lenovo Smart screen and used Google Duo. It worked really great. I would have preferred some dedicated buttons but we were able to get our 90 year old great grandmother to use it. Alas this was backed by Google and they no longer think Duo is fun. It seems that everyone want to be on the video conference market but no-one wants to cater to simple point-to-point calling. I really hoped the SIP standard would rule the world by now. But that did not happen either.
- comprev 4y agoAs a family distributed globally we jumped on FaceTime for video calls early on. Each family had an iPad (later a few had iPhones too) and the UI was grandparent friendly. Actually seeing, as opposed to just hearing, my nephews grow up was fantastic. Being able to see art they made at school, see fancy dress costumes, etc. made the family feel much closer - despite 8hrs time difference.
- midoridensha 4y ago>The Facebook Portal (2018-22) >RIP sweet dedicated family videophone. Wow, this reminds me of Google: another great-sounding thing I didn't hear about until after it was canceled.