EskeRahn
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Posts posted by EskeRahn
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It is mostly marginal in the EU. But Switzerland is often not really handled in the logistic. I once ordered a chair from GB which had free shipping to the EU. But it was 69.90 Euros to Switzerland. So it is unfortunately not marginal.
Ouch! That was a nasty one! ;(
Though I'm quite sure the Pro¹ parcel is going to be both smaller and lighter than a chair. ;) But it could still be disproportional expensive.
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The shipping cost would be important for me too. Depending on that I may order it to a different country (Germany instead of Switzerland, because it is in the EU). And fetch it there.
Without this information preodering has to wait for me. It may sound stupid but it wouldn’t be the first time the extra 50km to Switzerland would cost a fortune.
Indeed! Living reasonably close to a border or having friends at the other side, can make a huge difference. I remember once when I should send a Ricoh camera to Germany for repair, it would cost a minor fortune from Denmark, but as a friend was visiting Berlin a few days later he brought it and sent it for 'next to nothing'...
Though compared to the €650 it is likely to be marginal.
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This is great. I am just happy that I finally get a new model QWERTY phone, with Android and the screen tilts up.
Flat sliders really are awkward, not ergonomic and a bit of a pain when you want to sit it on a table and watch something with mates.
This phone can be used how I like to use a phone, mainly sitting on my desk, table or arm-rest.
Also while laying in bed easier on the hands and wrists.
I'm totally with you, I saw it as an annoying back step when going from N97mini to Xperia Pro. (The N97 was on the other hand utterly useless outdoors except at night, due to very very poor contrast, I actually used a Samsung Wave when outdoors...)
I do recall that the N97mini was not intuitive to open though. That you needed to press slightly 'downwards' with the slide, meant that when you showed it to new people, they were usually unable to open it. Not a big deal today when everyone got a phone, but back then it was not uncommon that someone borrowed my phone, and could not open it.
Can not wait to get my hands on the Pro¹ and have this feeling in my fingers again - and the sound....
Here is a tiny video from XDA https://www.xda-developers.com/fxtec-pro-1-initial-review/ (shortened)
[attachment file=13595]
(though I expect to open it with a thumb)
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I feel that the tilt provided by the Pro1 is sufficient adjustability could be a bonus, rather than what looks like a snap between two positions.
The whole idea behind this mechanism is two arms of different lengths, so the angle is going to be completely fixed at a specific point in the extend.
From 0° when closed, to 25° raised fully opened. (Or as F(x)tec oddly count: 180° when closed to 155° open)
This keeps the mechanism rather simple, and thus stable over time, compared to the double motion ones with the slide and tilt as two independent mechanisms.
In my experience, the double arm system is also MUCH easier to blow free of pocket lint or the like. My N97mini only occasionally needed you to blow at it. Both the SE Xperia Pro and the BB Pris was quite complex to clean, whenever the sliding was no longer a smooth motion, due to collected dirt.
(The cheap slide(&tilt) cases I experimented with for an Ip6- also had cleaning issues for the sliding rails)
Here a gif from Venturebeat
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I agree with you, but people do not change that often any more: (source). Seems that people get that the differences are minor now (that’s why folding screens are tried, the industry is hungry for everything that is new. Even if it is that stupid. That is also the reason the timing for the Pro¹ is fantastic!). Only tech-bloggers seem to not understand that (no of course you have to write something). But that could also be a chance for the Pro¹. It will be very easy to write an interesting article about the Pro¹ as long as they focus on the keyboard.
I would claim that we the last couple of years has seen an incline in he prices, but a very limited evolution of the phablets. So the incitement to upgrade what ever we have is lacking or at the least limited. For many years the prices of the 'flagships' was roughly the same, but the phones improved YoY.
The last almost ten years we have seen a decrease in variation, so almost only slabs are available, and even with very small variation in the stamina. We have had slowly increased surfaces, increased pixel density, and increased image qualities of the camera substitutes. And to handle this increased processor power. You could say that the only really new thing that has happened is the finger print scanners. Hardly a big revolution, as the introduction of touch screen was. Build in planned obsolescence by the batteries not user replaceable has become the norm, to trick people to upgrade anyway...
By the very early (almost prototypes) of folding devices we see this year, there might FINALLY be some new development away from slabs only, and in this context the timing of the Pro¹ seems quite lucky as you said.
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Surely DUAL SIM support is baked in stock Android. I doubt fxtec has the resources to implement that themselves.
For the principal functionality, I'm sure you are right. But it seems that not all apps handle it equally well. e.g. apps 'locking' to a specific phone number. Hence the popularity of the cloning apps.
You might want to use the same account with two phone numbers if you operate in a border region, and would avoid roaming.
Or it could be a work&private scenario, where you would like things separated.
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Sadly most of the reviews seem to focus quite heavy on the old CPU. Which in my opinion is not that important for 99% of the users. But still leaves the impression of an outdated phone.
Had it been a less known chipset people would most likely never have known if it was not the newest available. *LOL*
That is the flipside of using a well known and tested chipset. 'Everybody' know it is not the newest, and the fewest are asking the question if it really matters... (nor the risk of bugs on being first movers on anything)
You see the same with car models and people saying "but that is last years model", not really reflecting on whether the differences matters for their usage.
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Non-replaceable batteries = when battery is dead, most people buy a new phone and not battery. Only some replace the battery in service for a big price. And only a few has no problem replace the battery by themself.. So it is profitable for manufacturer.
Totally agree here.
Early on when I bought a new device, I gave the old one away, and with a new battery or two, it would be as new. After a couple of year an 'old' flagship is comparable to a new midranger, so now sending the device in somewhere for a battery swap, would easily be for a price comparable with a new midranger, so it just end up as waste...
Again here aPple are the greedy crooks, they were the first to on a massive scale use this planned obsolescence nonsense, and frankly I wish that a large player like the EU would say that by a certain year (say 2025) it would simply not be allowed to sell battery-products without a user-replaceable battery inside the EU.
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Well i dont understand why so many are not happy with curve screen and looks like it has the largest number of posts.I think curved screen is a good choice. it can be used very efficiently for pulling side menus, maybe displaying side notifications and would also gives a smooth swiping experience.I currently also have galaxy note 8 besides Nokia E7. i can tell you that galaxy note 8 with curved screen feels much better and works much better with swiping and fingers. and it also does look nice.
To be fair, the galaxy note 8 is way newer than the nokia E7. In these 6 years touchscreens have evolved a lot. Haptic feedback is way better, they are faster, smoother and so on. To put this on the curved screen is most certainly wrong.
I completely agree with you that it could be used efficiently with special functions for the curved part. But until now I do not see anything like that.
The drawbacks however are known and clear. that makes it hard for some people to understand the decision. But we will have to see, maybe the curved screen will be great.
As said earlier I see that on one hand a flat screen with substantial mechanical metal bezels would be better protected on edge impacts.
On the other that would (keeping all else the same) require a lesser display area and make the device about 1mm thicker, thus making it look even more of something out of the past. And my GUESS would be that the guys designing this after careful considerations have decided in favour of the edged design.
Remember that for many people looks is still a big thing (fashion in clothing is strangely important for a LOT of people). So if they felt the looks to be embarrassingly old fashioned, that just MIGHT lead to some not buying it, despite wanting a real keyboard. On the other hand, I doubt that many would feel the edges so much a deal breaker that this would stop them from buying it.
I do not know of any functional benefits of a curved screen on Android though, but as I understand Sailfish there might be some here.
I DO hope they will make some software/firmware solution that would allow the users having problems with grip and edges to seletc zones ignoring touch. Perhaps not from day one, but if enough people would report is as a real problem.
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I (now) understand your point. But I would not shift the numbers. It seems like a good idea. But I imagine, that since you are typing with your thumbs, it does not really matter if the numbers are above the correct keys. I image it is easier to find them if they at their normal places. I just think it would be good to shift as few keys as possible. But that is again only based on my Imagination. Could be dead wrong if you finally had the keyboard in your hand.
My thought is that if the top number row follow the letter rows it will feel like it was four keys at the right side that was moved to the left, but all the rest kept their usual logic (relative) positions.
But sure you could be right that the experience is so different from a standard keyboard, that it does not really matter either way.
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Hi FXTec,
I just canceld my pre-order, let me shortly explain why….
There is only talk on this forum, no action, and I dont see anymore news.
Only talking on this forum about the pro’s and con’s won’t do the job for anybody.
The people have spoken for and against a curved screen, I hope you take this customer feedback and do something with it.
I have read this forum now multiple times over and over.
I dont like the waste of time and that you guys dont listen, only making things more complex.
The choise is still very simple.. as soon the PDA is on the market (still taking a looong time) I will test it, hold it, look if there are handeling-issues or video not showing properly, or a few mm of useless screen space, with a curved screen and then I will make a dissicion.
So, for now I’m out.
Good luck with your company
Would be interesting to know what you expected from a forum just a few months before release. Did you expect that we could influence any substantial hardware changes at this late stage?
I think that we might influence a bit on things like the print on the keys (see e.g. the thread on the German QWERTZ keyboard)
And we might be able to influence the software, if we can come up with some useful ideas, that are not too far from what they already have made.
Many of the wishes for how things could be different hardware-wise, I see that as input for a Pro2 (if they will make one).
Once we got the device in our hands, the forum is likely to be more active. Hopefully there are not too many bugs, But the forum could help out with collecting info on known bugs, and perhaps sharing workarounds until fixed.
I also expect that there will be something for sharing different keyboard layouts (complete or partial ones).
And in general feedback or questions on how to get the most of the device. e.g. recommend apps especially well suited for landscape keyboard devices.
....But that said, I'm not a twitter-guy, and would MUCH prefer to have the tweets duplicated in here -as they did with the early news-letters- so I did not need to use that silly platform to get the info. I hate Twitter almost as much as fakebooks.
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Ah well just did a little search on Google and ebay for "Elephone U PRO", and ordered a couple of each of these three variants. 1, 2 & 3
But there are several others vendors out there, and I have NO idea if the ones I bought are good or bad. So not endorsing them, just picked at random, to be sure I had some protection from day one.
Note that none of the ones I found are curved tempered glass. So I hope F(x)tec (or perhaps Elephone?) would entice someone to make curved tempered glass protectors for them.
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I would also agree with some of the commenters here: Knowing that Eske is one of the few people with hands-on experience with the keyboard, I would trust his intuition and suggestions. I would agree with him that his suggested modified layout to the keyboard would be best.
I’m an American English-speaking pre-orderer.
Thanks,
Sorry to disappoint, I have not had the chance to have my hands on the device yet. So my suggestion is from a purely theoretical viewpoint.
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I would prefer that layout anyway… as I would not need to learn another placement of my modifier keys for áéő etc and there are also correct placement of keys for working conveniently on a terminal like doing ssh to another machines.
So I would vote for an unmodified version of QUERTY layout.
Just to be sure: You mean you prefer unmodified to standard, and not unmodified compared to what the Pro¹ images we currently see, right?
My suggestion is that IF the letters should be shifted THEN the numbers should follow. (That is either all four or no rows shifted, not a mix)
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The absolutely best would have been to find a way for people to print their own layout :D I have no clue how this production processes work, but if one would get the US layout per default, and you can pay another 10usd for your customized layout, gosh!
Now THAT would be awresome, though I doubt $10 could cover the cost of handling them individually...
Continuing on the customization wishes, imagine 3D-prints in a suitable partly transparent elastic material...
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Yup and from the number on the display (BF060Y8M-AJ0-7702), we can see that it is the one used also on "Elephone U Pro", see e.g. this. And there already are screen protectors for that one - so one concern less. :)
PS: It should even be Gorilla Glass 5. That is not 3 as the early preproduction units.
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Pretty much the opposite for me, 99% of the time I use Scandinavian layout and only when there’s some compability issues i revert to US layout. Anyway, hope to get some official answer what the options will be, if there will be any.
Don't get me wrong, my point was that it is not that important, what is actually printed on the key, as long as it is not way off. I mean a Dvorak print or the shifted QWERTY print would be problematic used with Danish layout. But anything roughly close would work with Danish for me. And the suggested QWERTZ is certainly close enough for me :) - But sure I would prefer a Scandinavian print.
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Hard to decide without trying it out. But tend to the non-shifted layout, just because we are used to that.
But without any hands-on testing we have to trust fxtec. If a non-shifted layout leads to holding the phone always on the left side, close to tipping over… well I would prefer the shifted layout.
Agree. My point was if the numbers should follow the letters or not. Currently the layout we see has shifted the letters only, leaving the two parts 'misaligned' compared to what we are all used to, and that is what I think could be problematic.
(Tried to edit the OP to make it more clear)
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I know this have been mentioned deep inside other threads, but would like to have it isolated, to hear what others feel.
For languages like English and American English only using A-Z and no additional nation letters, I do get the idea of logically right shifting the keys to get them more centred, making it easier to let the left/right thumb do what the left/right hand do an a normal keyboard, without too much stretching from the right.
However in the current layout the digits and dash keys are not shifted in the same way.
I personally think that digits and dash should follow the letters, what do you think?
I would suggest that a shifted layout should look like
rather than
That is the keys for 1,2...0 and dash/minus also shifted into their normal relative positions to QWERTYUIOP, moving the = key left.
(cosmetically moved the apostrophes up a bit so they do not look like commas, and extended the underscore to make it stand out from a dash)
YES I know this would move + and = to the 'wrong' side. But do many need those that often on a phone? I would claim that the potential users in general is MUCH MUCH more likely to use a dash and the digit-keys with their symbols much more often than + and =, and would find it really inconvenient to have 22 symbols left-shifted relative to the letters for no important reason.
For those (I assume very few) using it for coding the move of the brackets and braces would be almost as bad as + and =, so they would most likely prefer a non-shifted layout anyway, i.e. ROUGHLY like
(sorry did not insert all)
So these few could use an international print like the QWERTZ proposed here by Waxberry
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...But this Forum is for Feedback...
Exactly, and I hope it did not seem I wanted to stop the discussion.
As it is for sure valuable input to how a next generation (that I hope will come) should be in say a year or two.
We are at the same pace I think. Would personally prefer a screen with protective bezels. BUT if curved screens can wheel in more buyers, then fine with me. As with the keyboard trying to monetize the "prefer", I would not pay £200 more to get it with a flat screen, but £50 I would.
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...It is way more acceptable if someone says “Yes it is good, it has the US-Layout tough”. This has never stopped early-adopters.
Feel exactly the same, especially if it is the print only, and we can select a national layout if we so choose. So we can choose between using the standard layout printed, but not perfectly fitting, or a national layout slightly different from the printed.
I would say that more than 90% of the time I use my Danish-printed PC-keyboard with a logic US-layout, primarily to get to brackets and braces easily for coding.(but also since there were no Danish layout for the first computers I used, I made my own keyboard driver back then...)
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...Making a ton of phones with physically different keyboards is inexpedient, for “qwertz” layout it is not an issue at all, just press “y” to get “z”, i do not see any problems to remember several buttons.
Thanks for the info on the Russian+English combination. :)
I feel much the same way on multiple keyboards, as long as the base layout is there, all the fine details is not that important. I would not like a completely blank keyboards, as the different size from a pc will not trigger the 'muscle memory', but it is not that important to me whether A-Z are printed as QWERTY , QWERTZ or even AZERTY. It would still be enough familiarities to 'anchor' the layout.
Not unexpectedly I would prefer a Danish print, but it clearly is a nice-to-have and not a need-to-have for me. How much do I really 'prefer' then? Well, I would not pay say £100 extra to get it, though £10 I would.
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....but changes that alter either the look of the phone, significantly increase manufacturing cost or have a change of delaying the launch are most likely not going to happen.
I totally agree with you. I think the "door" to all this opened as they said that it was their intention to replace the screen with a different one than the one that was on the prototypes presented in Barcelona during MWC. But this was back in February, So I would be very surprised if they here in April had not long settled on a specific display - and likely have been preparing the production for it too. And if that was a principal different type of display, I'm pretty sure we would have heard more on it. Though it could be ever so slightly thicker/thinner or larger/smaller than what was on the prototypes.
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As the layout seems to be mainly for German users and only additionally for Scandic/Swiss etc. I would favor choosing German Strg/Entf etc., especially as some others already said they don’t really mind what’s printed there.
But I have to admit that’s easy to say as a German ;)
The whole point in this thread is that people tell what would be the best qwertZ keyboard for them, so we should listen to you. That people of other nationalities (like me) might find it closer to what they want than the US qwertY, I would say is just a bonus.
Have we heard any voices from Austria in here? Do they use the exact same layout as in Germany, or does it (like Swiss) have some differences?
This claims that it is the same for Germany and Austria AND displays the differences with the one for Switzerland&Luxembourg according to IBM. The difference mainly being the later ease the use of French. Plus Brackets, Braces and other symbols placed differently
I early on suggested an 'open' layout, intended to be used not as a general international keyboard, but as a base for national layouts usable in many countries, with prints of the national letters 'missing' on a few keys, so we would have to remember these few by hart (or write on the keys manually)
Design the QWERTZ layout
in Pro1 - Thoughts & questions
Posted
I'm quite sure that we will be able to have the layout we want software-wise, including all kind of special symbols and nationally bound letters. So the discussion here is merely on what should be printed on the keys.
It is an interesting idea if a Swiss layout could be a compromise that is acceptable to several nationalities.