[poll] Have you had a keyboard phone before?

[david 929]

In full disclosure, I was *this* close to buying a new, non-physical keyboard phone and using a bluetooth thumb keyboard with it (or my Relay 4G as a keyboard and screen for it when I needed to type).  Then the news came out about the Pro1, so I kept going down the Relay 4G path for another better part of a painful year.  I guess what I am saying is that I can understand what caused many of you to commit your sins and I forgive you.  😁😂😂

[david 929]

20 minutes ago, david said:

So you are saying that you'll redeem yourself by throwing the emperor down the air duct?  *grins*

Wouldn't that make a great ad campaign for the Pro1?  All these people picking up a giant slab, with lightening shooting out of it, and throwing it down the air duct?  

Or, another alternative....  All these people, unconscious, laying on big slab phones, until "The Chosen One" (Neo/Pro1) brings them back into reality.

Or, if they didn't think people would get the references, even just showing dozens of people tossing their slabs in the trash would work. 😁

 

Edited November 7, 2019 by david

[netman 1,424]

Just now, david said:

Wouldn't that make a great ad campaign for the Pro1?  All these people picking up a giant slab, with lightening shooting out of it, down the air duct?  

Or, if they didn't think people would get the reference, even just showing dozens of people tossing their slabs in the trash would work. 😁

Hahaha, that'd be great yeah :D. The odd history is that I truely gave touchscreen slab typing a fair try to see if I could learn and get used to it, after hearing some peoples denial and confirmation bias motivated justification for no keys, but nonetheless... A regretable decision. Then later I did use an e72 for as long as I could get all my stuff done on symbian, gotten one of those over an e7 because i wanted like NO touchscreen atall. It was nice for a while but it gets hard to keep up and stuff kept breaking because it was too old (as in the other end of the internet the apps connect to is just gone). Nowadays I just don't use my phone much.

[david 929]

Related information:

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sixth-annual-us-national-texting-championship-ignores-touchscreen/story?id=16958756

Quote

LG added a touchscreen round to last year's competition but pulled it this year. "During last year's competition, we integrated a touch screen challenge understanding many are in use today," Brown said. "However, we found contestants had trouble completing the phrases accurately during that round. This year, for consistency and accuracy purposes, we decided to keep with physical QWERTY keyboards."

 

[netman 1,424]

55 minutes ago, david said:

Related information:

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sixth-annual-us-national-texting-championship-ignores-touchscreen/story?id=16958756

 

That's golden :D. Im sure nowadays touchscreens fare not much better. When our phones arrive we should all do typeracer.com matches :).

[david 929]

10 minutes ago, netman said:

That's golden :D. Im sure nowadays touchscreens fare not much better. When our phones arrive we should all do typeracer.com matches :).

Yep, I thought that was pretty special. 😄

I have read some reports of some people typing faster on some virtual keyboards than the old records of the physical keyboards.  However, those people probably don't have access to physical keyboards (they might be faster on them if they did have access) and I don't know if predictive typing is allowed, etc.  It seems like they use the same sentences for the test too, which isn't a true typing test.

Fxtec should give a few phones to the fast virt typers, with the condition that they can keep them if they break the record. 😄

[netman 1,424]

26 minutes ago, david said:

I have read some reports of some people typing faster on some virtual keyboards than the old records of the physical keyboards.

I'm not too surprised but that works only if you are writing correct English and doing the predictive magic... And even then it's not only about speed, it's just frustrating to type on a piece of glass. But try to write code or enter commands and passwords and the likes on a virtual keyboard ouccchhh...

If it is without autocorrection/prediction I'll eat my hat though, yet still ain't for me.

Edited November 7, 2019 by netman

[david 929]

Just now, netman said:

yet still ain't for me.

Me either!  It drives me *crazy* typing on a virtual keyboard.  And if the typing isn't bad enough, the wrong predictive words being automatically guessed and either sent (if not found) or having to be corrected, is very aggravating.  

[netman 1,424]

8 minutes ago, david said:

Me either!  It drives me *crazy* typing on a virtual keyboard.  And if the typing isn't bad enough, the wrong predictive words being automatically guessed and either sent (if not found) or having to be corrected, is very aggravating.  

 

Yep. For anything over a few words long I just wait until I get on a PC or laptop usually, avoiding the phone as much as possible. I have the autocorrect disabled but use suggestions a lot when on the phone, which works but the amount of errors made slows me down a lot, it angers me and slows me down every time an error happens and it happens a lot. There's no way around having tactile feedback before during and after keypresses to solve it.

[david 929]

4 minutes ago, netman said:

 

Yep. For anything over a few words long I just wait until I get on a PC or laptop usually, avoiding the phone as much as possible. I have the autocorrect disabled but use suggestions a lot when on the phone, which works but the amount of errors made slows me down a lot, it angers me and slows me down every time an error happens and it happens a lot. There's no way around having tactile feedback before during and after keypresses to solve it.

Agreed.  I even wait for my PC/laptop, and I have a keyboard phone.  But my threshold is higher than what it would be if I was using a virtual keyboard.  As you said, I'd probably be limited to a few words.  Or I'd use a bluetooth keyboard.  As it is, I will rarely type out a long email if it is inconvenient to get to the PC/laptop, but generally, it is multi-sentence texts/IMs that I'm sending.  For email, I try to wait for the full sized keyboard.

I have the frustration of the Kitkat 4.4 (Cyanogenmod), plus modern apps that use too much RAM, plus slow virtual memory swapping, pegging my CPU periodically, and only being able to keep 1 or 2 apps in memory (I manually kill them off..but that doesn't help for all the background stuff).  Having to wait several seconds frequently to do something is a pain.  But I'll take that pain over the virtual keyboard pain.  Can't wait to get the Pro1 and not have either pain.

[ksal95 227]

4 hours ago, david said:

Wouldn't that make a great ad campaign for the Pro1?  All these people picking up a giant slab, with lightening shooting out of it, and throwing it down the air duct?  

Or, another alternative....  All these people, unconscious, laying on big slab phones, until "The Chosen One" (Neo/Pro1) brings them back into reality.

Or, if they didn't think people would get the references, even just showing dozens of people tossing their slabs in the trash would work. 😁

 

 

Will you take the slab pill?...Or the QWERTY pill?... 

[Flash-a-holic 39]

I still have two Droid 4 phones but I do not use them anymore as a daily driver. The other one is running Lineage OS 14.1 and second one Sailfish OS. I also made my own DIY QWERTY smartphone (Xiaomi Mi 4C and iPhone bluetooth case).

 

Edited November 7, 2019 by Flash-a-holic

[stavers 9]

I can't remember all of my early phones, but I definitely had an HTC Touch Pro 2 a long time ago.  More recently, Passport and then 2x Priv.  Kept thinking about replacing it with a Key 2 but didn't want the downgrade in screen size & resolution from the Priv!

[ravelo 11]

@Flash-a-holic I am interested in this bluetooth keyboard. Is it suitable for a nice typing experience? Thanks, ravelo

[Flash-a-holic 39]

1 hour ago, ravelo said:

@Flash-a-holic I am interested in this bluetooth keyboard. Is it suitable for a nice typing experience? Thanks, ravelo

I replied to this in other thread.

 

[mahasamatman 2]

I've had two keyboard phones. My first was a Samsung Sidekick 4G, and I currently use an LG F3Q. It's now several years old (and running Android 4) which is why I really want my F(x)tec!

[SchattengestaIt 559]

To be honest, typing without autocorrect (I've always hated it) and with a good virtual keyboard (not that google shit but one with numbers, shift/ctrl and special signs typed by two fingers) is quite pleasing.

The only reason I want a keyboard phone is because you are able to type blind completely with them, while you still have to correct yourself with a virtual keyboard from time to time.

[GameboyRMH 18]

I had a Motorola cheapo phone, then my first "smartphone" and keyboard phone, a Treo 180, then a Treo 650, then an N900, and now a Droid 4 running LineageOS 14.1 - within just the last few weeks the flex cable has started to fail so I've lost the hardware keyboard function 

 

[david 929]

4 hours ago, GameboyRMH said:

and now a Droid 4 running LineageOS 14.1 - within just the last few weeks the flex cable has started to fail so I've lost the hardware keyboard function 

Better the keyboard than the screen.  But I feel for you.  I really hope the flex cable lasts a looooong time on the Pro1 and that we are able to buy that as a replacement part.  I know I'll be buying at least 1 flex cable fairly soon, assuming they aren't super expensive.

[_DW_ 628]

You sure you can't get a replacement flex cable?

[MortisAngelus 2]

Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro Mk16i and Nokia C6-00

 

 

[MortisAngelus 2]

On 11/8/2019 at 12:16 AM, SchattengestaIt said:

To be honest, typing without autocorrect (I've always hated it) and with a good virtual keyboard (not that google shit but one with numbers, shift/ctrl and special signs typed by two fingers) is quite pleasing.

The only reason I want a keyboard phone is because you are able to type blind completely with them, while you still have to correct yourself with a virtual keyboard from time to time.

Which keyboard app is this?

[ksal95 227]

+1, I too would also like to know

[DutchFIX 9]

As far as i remember my really first one was a IPAQ 6310/6315 followed bij a Vodafone HTC clone with the same slider mech as the pro1, with the same tilted screen.

Tried the Nokia N97 for a day orso but returned it because of crippled software. And that was the end of the physical keyboard phones.  

[auvo.salmi 135]

I had few HTC Desire Z's, and preordered Jolla phone, hoping for some hw keyboard Other Half. I actually had both of those made by dirkvl, but felt them being more of a curiosity than a really usable thing. After Jolla I went to some newer Android phones with unofficial Sailfish ports, but then got tired to lack of hwkb. At this point I switched to N900, which I hadn't used before. Then I preordered Pro1 and was planning to use my N900 until I get the Pro1. But sadly I broke the USB port of my N900 two weeks ago, so I had to go back to my Oneplus X with Sailfish port for few weeks, until the Pro1 arrives.