netman

Well rant or not, I wholeheartedly agree this focus on needing the best SoC is madness. The 835 is a pretty nice choice in my opinion, saves some cost over the newest bestest, and it is miles ahead of mediatek etc. I could understand that people want better if they chose to go with some low end chip or so, but SD835 is faster than any phone I've ever had, or would consider buying if it wasn't for having a keyboard (I wouldn't normally pay 650eur for a phone, but in this case it'll be well worth it)...

@netman does not work for fxtec :P, he just scrapes the forum and tries to be helfpul. Hopefully waxberry will see the post though!

Brilliant work, thanks for sharing :). I always found it strange there isn't more slider keyboard cases on the market, I've seen something like it sold for iphones and of course the moto mods keyboard. I've always wanted to get one of those iphone keypads and just glue it onto a case for my phone but for whatever reason that never happened (I had a hard time finding them at the time and ended up using a nokia e72 a good long while then forgetting of the plan).

Pre-order online from this website is supposed to ship to Canada I believe (pre order only wants payment when the phones are actually produced). Actual sales should start in Juli somewhere. Don't know if it will be in real stores in Canada, maybe someone else can clarify. For the pre-order price is $650 or 650euro depending from where ordered (excluding shipping), I would guess if it lands in stores price would be similar.

I'm from belgium where we use a variant of azerty typically, but I have everything qwerty because I don't really like the big ISO style enter key and I really hate having to use shift to use the number row. It does make me unable to conveniently type some of the accented characters used in dutch but it's generally acceptable to just leave the accent away in informal communications so it does not bother me much.

More youtube videos have appeared recently :) [edit] This videos description also links to an accompanying article: https://www.androidauthority.com/fxtec-pro1-review-960653/

At the right is a picture of the illusive xperia neo pro1... :D

I love it! Very nice pictures and neat animation :). Now I am yet more excited for launch time. If they add nubs on the f and j keys I don't think the shifted layout would take me too long to get used to personally. Looking at it side by side with the other phones this is definitely gonna be the biggest and best keyboard ever on a phone, even on a total new level from what we used to have with n97 and n900 etc :).

I feel pretty much the opposite, on a phone as big as 6" I like to have dense home screen, lists, etc.

Fair point that reviewers will probably be more critical about the software than we would :D. Hopefully it's all nice and polished by the time the critics come along, as this is the first time in a loooong time mainstream phone users will have an opportunity to even consider a physical keyboard device and join our camp :).

It certainly looks awesome from all that's to see :D. The software isn't in a hurry i guess as even when the device is out OTA updates can be offered, etc. I'm really looking forward to see your mini-(p)review of it :). It'd be nice to know how the key-feel compares to older devices you have on hand, and how the form factor feels in the hand, even though I'll just be jumping up and down until Juli anyway xD.

Wow you so lucky to get to see one already :)! Are you at liberty to tell us more? How does it feel to type on?

whoa you so lucky! are you at liberty to tell us more? how does it feel to type on?

JPEG is far superior for compressing photos, PNG excels at things like line drawings and screenshots where there's big uniformly colored areas.

Before attachments were allowed here I uploaded pictures to my website and used the img tag to get them on the forum.

Ohh and it's started!

I am watching it also, I think we're in the right place but they're a bit late. The schedule tells "all about android" is set to start 2am, and the picture on twitter says that name too.

On twitter and facebook a livestream tonight was announced: And yesterday 4 videos showing off the device appeared on the fxtec youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfkDfk_zTQyxsNDKKPkxb6w

It looks great. Personally I don't mind if the trim around the camera protrudes a tiny bit, if it protudes past the camera glass it will prevent scratching the camera if sat on a flat surface. Ideally you'd put it in a case or stick some small rubber feet on to sit it on a desk anyway. Also I imagine one would mostly use the keyboard only when holding the device by means of thumbs due to the type of keys, and sitting the device down only for less interactive things like watching video.

forwarding this here from twitter

I do agree with EskeRahn here, also there's a lot of action and listening here compared to the "competition" as far as that exists.

There is a rockbox port for android, which looks like it should work but i have not tried it myself (also I don't have a pro1 yet to test on the exact hardware). And there appears to be the catch that builds and themes are specific for a given screen resolution and a build for 2160x1080 is not something i could find, so you'd have to compile it from source yourself most likely (you need a pc with loads of ram, like 8gb or more, and some patience). There is a page telling what is supported and what not (no fm radio and no recording, otherwise sounds good) and how to compile it etc here: https:/

By gboard i mean the google keyboard default on phones that don't come with some strange keyboard app by the manufacturer (link), for android 7 at least i had to update it from the appstore and fiddle with settings to get it to do bilingual. Dutch does have some characters with accents on them and such, but generally it's perfectly legible without those so I got used to doing everything qwerty and ignoring the accents are a thing. You can set the danish keyboard layout and use that for english also I believe, I had to explicitly somehow get rid of the belgian layout it wanted me to use for dut

I use both Dutch and English on a regular basis, but generally I keep all apps set to English because the translations tend to be lousy and confusing. However I do have gboard set up so i can swipe and get suggestions in both languages mixed, which I'm very glad it supports since what feels like not too long ago.

I also love clip on backs... The most recent non-android I used was a lumia 730 with a plastic clip-on (maybe more clip-over actually) back and alas no keyboard, it was easy to work and very durable. Nowadays it's all glass and metal backs because plastic has a cheap reputation or something, and I don't totally get it... The pro1 is already a great leap in the right direction away from minimalistic iphone copies, really excited to see if it leads to more good stuff :).