QWERTY Phones Are Really Trying to Make a Comeback This Year

Comments

• IcedRaktajino@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone for about 6 or 7 months now, and man am I excited to have options for QWERTY phones again.

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  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone for about 6 or 7 months now, and man am I excited to have options for QWERTY phones again.

    It’s like they’re designed solely for scrolling an endless feed of mind-numbing slop.

    It is because they are exactly that.

    There exist palmtops and handheld computers. I have a Gemini PDA running Sailfish OS Linux and it feels very different - like a small, cat-sized laptop. No problem running ssh or vim or ledger on it, or self-written guile apps, or cross-compiled Rust CLI tools. It is a computer, not a consumption device.

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    • IcedRaktajino@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Gemini PDA

      Is that the one from PlanetCom? I’ve been looking at both their Gemini and Cosmo Communicator. Both were out of stock when I ended up going with the Minimal.

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    • Twig@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Kinda wanted to do something similar with the Pine Phone + Keyboard, but I can’t seem to find the right OS/distro for the task.

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  • three@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    6 🤷‍♂️ 7

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    • IcedRaktajino@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Image

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  • Areldyb@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone

    You managed to get one? The website says they ship in 3-5 business days. I ordered in November, and this week I canceled the order because all they’ve done so far is lie to me about ship dates. Terrible, terrible experience.

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    • IcedRaktajino@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I pre-ordered last June and got it toward the end of July. It seems to ship directly from the factory in Hong Kong, so you have to use the tracking link they send you until it clears customs in your country.

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  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I would highly suggest you and anyone else wanting a keyboard that’s actually useful to check out Unexpected Keyboard. You can write code with this thing without it being a nightmare.

    f-droid.org/packages/juloo.keyboard2

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• Franconian_Nomad@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Good, writing with a touch screen is absolutely horrendous.

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  • cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    All this bullshit about phones with folding screens nowadays when what I really want is a phone with a folding mechanical 104-key :P

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    • Franconian_Nomad@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Would also erase the need for the atrocious spellcheck. Few minutes ago I wanted to write „random“ it got changed to „ransom“ and when I changed it again I wrote “randon“ by accident.

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    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Let it fold: one half holds the landscape screen, and across the lengthwise hinge is space for a wonderful keyboard. Let it be a phone-phone when it’s clammed up and you still have space for Qi and a 3.5mm. BLISS

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    • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I love my 100% keyboard with white backlighting. Was hard to find a decent premade one but I did some years ago.

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  • flamingos@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Writing is okish, editing however is horrendous.

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I wonder how this will be with cursor navigation, though

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• Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  While we’re at it, can I have back the mini trrackball with integrated notification LED from my HTC Hero?

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  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And my removable battery, expandable storage, and IR blaster please.

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    • unphazed@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Ah my old Ipaq was so much fun at sports bars…

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  • GeneralVincent@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s not exactly the same but the Clicks phone keyboard is touch sensitive so you can swipe on the keyboard, and the button on the side has a notification LED

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    • cheers_queers@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      so does the titan 2 and titan pocket, i have them both

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  • dai@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Nexus one had the trackball, the hero had a sensor or did both? IDK it’s been some years since I still had my nexus one. Maybe I’m thinking of the HTC Desire with the sensor. 

    I do remember running the original version(s) of MIUI on my nexus one, ahh simpler times. 

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    • tpyo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I had a Nexus that I got as a hand me down. It had a ball with customizable colors

      The next one I had after that had an led you could customize for different types of notifications

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  • Hadriscus@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    ahhh I loved this thing

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  • 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yes. This. I second this.

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• Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’d buy one 100%. I hate touch screen keyboards. Some are better than others but take me back to the blackberry days.

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• tanisnikana@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  QWERTY phones are fine and all, and they work well for English, but sometimes I type with this, and I’m sure as hell not gonna use a slow-ass QWERTY replacement.

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  • k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The Japanese ten-key on a touch screen is so good because you can swipe. It makes me cringe when people tap give times to get お like we used to on physical number pads.

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    • tanisnikana@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      God, I don’t miss that. Honestly, I wish there was an English ten-key equivalent.

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I thought it autopredicted? At least that’s what the Chinese one does

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  • Ashtear@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Having to use something like Windows IME on a phone for Japanese is nightmare fuel

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• ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I wrote mobile apps from 2005 to 2019, first on WinCE/Windows Mobile and then iOS. Briefly in 2010 I wrote a TV Guide-type app for Blackberry. Up to that point I had had nothing but contempt for Blackberry but that experience really changed my mind almost instantly. The keyboards on those devices were just so incredibly good, and even though the screens were tiny, the trackball was a fantastic pointing device that allowed pinpoint precision even on that tiny screen (cleaning the trackball was definitely disgusting but you didn’t have to do it all that often). Under the hood those devices were really impressive as well; I don’t think anybody appreciated how much memory they actually had and how fast the processors really were.

  A minor weakness was that RIM chose 16-bit color for the displays early on, which gave a crappy look especially for videos (which were really too tiny to watch anyway). Halving your video RAM requirements maybe made sense in 2000 but it was a terrible decision just 18 months later (according to Moore, anyway). The major weakness, though, was the shitty development environment. The built-in controls provided by the framework were terrible, but the worst part was that any time you attempted to compile your app, each module incorporated into it had to be independently signed by RIM’s servers. On a good day, the signing process would take 10-15 minutes, while on a slow day it would take upwards of an hour or maybe never happen at all. And this was even if you’d made a one-line change to your code.

  RIP RIM, but I’d like to see the keyboards coming back. Also the trackwheels.

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  • IcedRaktajino@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’d love to see the keyboards and trackballs manufactured again if for no other purpose than having them available for other projects.

    There was a project a while back called Beepberry that was a little handheld Linux thing that used Blackberry keyboards. Among other reasons, the supply of the BB keyboards dried up so the project died.

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    • batboy5955@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      hackberry pi alive and well

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• jobbies@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I don’t think they are - if they were we’d be seeing models from the likes of Samsung or Huawei.

  Its good clickbait for gizmodo though.

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  • thesdev@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It looks like we’re getting decent options now? Like the Clicks one is designed in cooperation with a former Blackberry designer. From what I see on Reddit, BB Key2 from 2018 was the last good option in this space, so I understand the excitement.

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• comador@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Two decades later and I still miss my Blackberry keyboard.

  I played with the Chinese Zinwa Q25 last year and it sooo felt like a Blackberry. Too bad the Q25 was plagued with issues or I would have bought one.

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  • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m glad you mentioned the bugs. I was slowly leaning towards it but I’ve done my fair bit of… “unpaid beta testing” for one lifetime.

    I miss my BlackBerry phones. The Titan range was cool but buggy as well. If they could just do a Nothing phone with a QWERTY keyboard, I would literally buy one overnight.

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• Chais@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Make it an actual Linux phone and it might be a winner.

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  • Guilvareux@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Oooooh

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• ramjambamalam@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s amazing how homogenized phones have become: Apple or Google flavoured slabs with a 6" or 6.5" display.

  Fifteen years ago you could get sliders and flip phones and BlackBerry style phones and phones that had game controls, and 4" slabs and 6" slabs (called “phablets” back then). There was so much more choice and it was so much more fun. Now you can’t even get a modern phone that’s less than 6" so it fits easily in your pocket.

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  • Echolynx@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Algorithmic flattening in action.

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• CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Whether it’s nostalgia for a physical keyboard, frustration at iOS’s ever-worsening software keyboard, or just plain boredom with glass slabs, companies are rebooting QWERTY phones this year for some reason.

  Fuck them for mocking actual useful features and freedom of choice while simping for stupid shit like AI and enshittified tech from all the usual suspects.

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• mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  omfg yes please I would actually buy a brand new phone again for that

  I fucking hate entirely touchscreen stuff. using a sheets app on a touchscreen phone takes 10x as long as it should

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  • bluGill@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You can find bluetooth keyboards that work just fine on a phone. The hard part is finding a good small one.

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    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      not very convenient to use in a grocery store, though

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• sexy_peach@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I don’t get it. On screen is fine

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  • FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    …for you. Can you concede that maybe someone else might not like it?

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    • sexy_peach@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Sure I’m even happy to have hardware diversity

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  • rollin@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Same. This hardware keyboard is taking up potential screen real-estate.

    If you want a hardware keyboard, just use a bluetooth one, you can get folding ones which fold up pretty small.

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  • AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Same here. I get the nostalgia factor, and that tactile buttons can feel nice, but other than that I feel like it’s just a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t necessarily work well.

    Instead of a quick tap, you have to actually press on each button, which slows down typing. You can’t resize, recolor, or reformat your keyboard to fit your needs better, there’s no split keyboard functionality for landscape mode, etc.

    Plus it’s just more mechanical failure points and areas that dust and gunk can get stuck in.

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    • dublet@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Never had any of my phones with keyboards have a mechanical failure. I can type blindly on a physical keyboard, not so with an OSD one. Does the tap register? Does it predict into the right word? Who knows.

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    • Melonpoly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Plus it’s just more mechanical failure points and areas that dust and gunk can get stuck in.

      Good thing this has been solved for years now. It’s not like keyboards are a new invention.

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  • Jinarched@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s all about tactile feedback for me.

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• T00l_shed@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  God i hope so

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• Dholi@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Blackberry please come back.

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  • PhoenixDog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Without AI please.

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    they died because they were shit. No apps.

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• phx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Can I PLEASE have my early Droid pop-up keyboard back!!

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  • Jumbie@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Droid CEO here.

    No.

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• psoul@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Y’all are allowed to hot glue a Bluetooth keyboard to the back of your phone you know.

  Jokes aside, I wonder why there aren’t more protective cases with a built in sliding keyboard for phones. Would be cool.

  The minimal phone looks like a brick and I understand why the e-ink is a choice that forces you to not use your phone as much but I’m not ready.

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• glitchdx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Fuck do I miss my first gen Droid. A physical slide out keyboard that was also a switch between portrait and landscape view. I hate auto gyro rotation with a passion.

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• FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’m trying to get my hands on one. There’s a few apps that I still want a smart phone for like email, navigation, Garmin Connect. This would be awesome.

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  • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This is a smartphone. Basically just an android device with a keyboard

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    • FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      oh, no way

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  • lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I don’t think it’ll be shit, but they don’t talk about RAM at all while revealing all other specs. Given current RAM pricing it seems like they’re still trying to make a good deal on that, which will ultimately decide how much RAM customers get. It probably won’t be a lot.

    Unihertz put in 12GB into the Titan 2, good luck trying to match that now.

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• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Instead of ever-bigger screens thanks to flip open folding displays, how about the same size phone that flips open to an easily usable qwerty board?

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I just want Starks phone in the first Iron Man movie (I don’t think it was ever a real product) but as a modern smart phone.

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• cybernihongo@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Might be an unpopular opinion but

  In the late 2010s or early 2020s, I wrote a short story in the Notes app on a Nokia C3-00. It was one of the budget offerings with a QWERTY keyboard and WiFi support, and it was pretty awesome for the time, and still is to an extent.

  By that point I cycled through a few touchscreen phones beginning from tiny Samsung junkers to mid-range Chinese phones we would have called “phablets” a few years back and got used to touchscreens. I’m typing this right now on a touchscreen and it’s pretty nice, yeah autocorrect is wrong some of the time but it is solid most of the time, and I can type really fast. Typing on a phone with a small physical keyboard was eye opening in a way. It felt slow, and I had to actually put some effort into pushing the buttons to make them register. In all fairness, it could be the age of the phone making the buttons stiff.

  Something else is how the labels on the buttons eventually wear out. If this was a physical keyboard I could just replace it, but a small panel of keys built into a phone? Yeah not really replaceable.

  I get that all those very tall, very flat slabs of plastic and metal can get boring very quickly, but I guess because there’s not so much more left to perfect that form factor.

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  • yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I doubt the wpm of the average physical keyboard user could ever be lower on average compared to the wpm of users of touchscreen keyboards.

    That is to say, if we could somehow make a phone keyboard that was practical to use, but not so large that it defeats the portability of the device, imo, that would be the best.

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    • cybernihongo@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I think you might be underestimating how some people type really slowly when given a full sized QWERTY keyboard, numpad and all.

      Then again the one limiting factor of phone keyboards (touch or physical) is that they’re designed for two thumbs, instead of just whatever fingers happen to be closer to the button you want. Though I’ll admit I do miss when Nokia, BlackBerry, etc, came up with unique solutions for how to get a small physical keyboard attached to a phone.

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• missingno@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I miss my old Motorola Droid 2. I don't need a thinner phone, give me that slider form factor.

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• aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Hey, finally some things that aren’t exactly the same as everything else.

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• anon_8675309@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Needs Signal as well as LoRa

  I’d be all over it then.

  Except I find MrMobile weird.

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  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s just an Android phone, so yeah, it’ll have Signal.

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• LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’m tempted to give it a go but I exclusively type using swipe gestures on my phone so I’m not sure that’s a learning curve I want to commit to.

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• ambitiousslab@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There were some breakthroughs in postmarketOS with the BlackBerry KEY2 recently. I really hope a phone with the Blackberry Classic form factor gets good mobile linux support in the next few years (bonus points if it’s a linux-first device!) A physical keyboard (in that form factor) is one of the few things that could convince me to ditch the Librem 5.

  I grew up on the tail end of Blackberry’s dominance. Most of the people in my school had a Blackberry, I’ve always envied those keyboards, and I feel really nostalgic about them.

  There’s something special about that form factor that appeals to me more than the N900 or clamshell designs. I think it’s that they’re happy to compromise the screen for a great keyboard, rather than the other way round.

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• Ofiuco@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Qwerty flip phone and I’m in… But no foldable screen bullshit.

  Also give back the fucking aux input.

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• captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ll care when they’re Dvorak phones

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• Nalivai@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2

  They just had to announce it after I ordered the one with all the “bizarre” gimmicks.

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• lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I got the Unihertz Titan 2 in December and I absolutely love it. 12GB of RAM are amazing. The camera isn’t good, I hope they’ll improve that with the next model.

  Clicks is very quiet about the amount of RAM in their device, it seems like they haven,t finalized that yet. Given current RAM pricing, I fear a 6GB model coming… :(

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