[poll] Have you had a keyboard phone before?

[lizardgai4 22]

My first phone (and only keyboard phone) was a Pantech Pursuit 2 in 2012.  I was dissatisfied as it wasn't a smartphone.  My next phones would be a Nokia Lumia 1020 (2013, with camera grip), HTC One M8 (2014) and Moto Z Play (2016, with Hasselblad True Zoom, which I am typing this message on).  I did support the Keyboard Mod, now I pre-ordered the F(x)tec Pro1.  Still processing though.

[JillieBo 16]

I had a white LG Rumor in Middle school. Loved it. I’ve wanted a smart keyboard phone for years now. I‘ve even written to Samsung and Apple about it. Lol

[sequestris 710]

I still have my Sidekick 4G, but it stopped getting updated with Froyo.

Still works just fine.

[Wasmachineman_NL 99]

Still using a N900.

 

[pistikem 85]

me too, still using a Nokia N900.  i actually owned two N900s but the USB port broke in the 'newer' one.  so, i still use my first one, for some 10 years now...

but i can't make its openVPN running, so that's why i am really keen to get hold of that Pro1 !

 

Edited November 18, 2019 by pistikem

[ksal95 227]

2 hours ago, JillieBo said:

I‘ve even written to Samsung and Apple about it. Lol

The hero we need, but don't deserve

[Craig 1,435]

I still have three working Photon Qs, but my simmod one has worn out keyboard, so the two left are US Sprint only.   And it was my first smart phone.  (I did have keyboard featurephone prior, samsung flight 2 they gave me at work until I bought my own PQ).

Problems with using PQ in 2019 include when using sim-mod, no LTE (as there's only sprints bands), and 2G/3G not being added anymore and slowly going away.  Lineage stopped updates earlier this year at version 14.1 (Nougat).  With only 1GB ram LOS slow, and with 8GB storage, using lollipop or newer you have very little free space left, so have to use sdcard, making things even slower.  CM11 (KitKat) runs fairly well, especially pulling features from newer versions (like fs2s, zram, etc).   But, some apps require lollipop or newer, and LOS 12.1 is just as slow/big as nougat.   Enter Sailfish, fast, small, amazing.  Except no CDMA (Sprint) support, thus only useful for simmod (and thus no LTE).  and sprint has cheap mvno resellers (i.e. tello), so not so bad to use Sprint. I had my sprint photon q's with free service from FreedomPop until earlier this year too, when they folded.  Sprint still has cheap mvno resellers (i.e. tello) so not so bad.  But everything is a tradeoff somewhere.

Enter Pro1. 

 

There's someone in this forum who had his hand on a lot of photon Q's....

 

 

[david 929]

3 hours ago, Craig said:

With only 1GB ram LOS slow, and with 8GB storage, using lollipop or newer you have very little free space left, so have to use sdcard, making things even slower.  

I'm on the cyanogenmod kitkat version, so not apples to apples, but my SD card, used with the link2sd app, makes things run faster.  The access to the fast sd card is faster than the access to the internal storage, so my apps launch faster, read faster and write faster to the external card.   I have almost all apps linked to it.  I have a small number of critical apps not linked to it, in case the card dies.

Regarding this thread and your comments about phones dying...  I'm on my 5th or 6th Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G.  I had this one in reserve until the Pro1 was delayed this summer, and the screen flex cable started giving out on my previous Relay 4G that I had used for a year+.  I had to swap to this last one, and in about 3 months usage, the darn flex cable started going.  It is getting very bad now. 

I purchased what was supposed to be a new, in the box, phone and finally got it Friday.  They tried to sell me a used phone as if it was new!  So that is going back to the seller.  I had to purchase the last 2 flex cables known to man on the internet and I'll have to do surgery on these phones to keep one of them going until batch 2 of the Pro1s arrives.  :-/

If the Pro1 ever fails, I'll have another keyboard phone to go back to.  But I really don't want to think about going from the Pro1 back to a 2012 phone!  

[Parhelion 114]

3 hours ago, david said:

They tried to sell me a used phone as if it was new!  So that is going back to the seller

 

At the very least you can be sure THIS won't happen to you with Fxtec. At least not in first batch 😉

[david 929]

9 hours ago, Parhelion said:

 

At the very least you can be sure THIS won't happen to you with Fxtec. At least not in first batch 😉

Well.....I *am* in the second batch!!!  LOL

[divstar 164]

I have had a HP Veer (which I still do, but the battery and the OS suck somewhat). I also own a PRIV. The latter wasn't that great, because whenever I needed performance, it quickly became too hot. Otherwise it was fine - especially since it had touch-enabled keys. But after no Update-support and even the lack of security updates (and no way to use custom ROMs) I am done with BlackBerry.

Looking forward to my Pro1!

[Rob. S. 1,660]

For most of the time I was using slider smartphones:

The first was a Vodafone branded HTC Wizard 110, the second a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, also designed and made by HTC, both running "Windows Mobile", an abomination of a mobile OS which could only be used with a small stylus that accompanied both handsets. Except for the keys which weren't too durable, I really liked the early Xperia's hardware, though, and sometimes I wish we could still get smartphones with such compact dimensions.

The first HTC Desire Z, after the keyboard more and more gave out, was replaced with a second – the life of which was substantially prolonged by the Cyanogenmod that was already flashed when I bought the used device, because HTC never offered anything beyond Gingerbread and the ICS-level Cyanogenmod ROM not only let it use apps which wouldn't have run without it, it made it astonishingly fast, all of a sudden, too.

Still it was only a stopgap, and more and more apps didn't run properly anymore as time went by because the hardware just couldn't completely do what ICS expected it to.

Which was when and why I eventually bought a BlackBerry PRIV (now sold, therefore not in the picture), even though I didn't like its tiny keyboard. But the Motorola Photon Q was already dated, it's LTE capabilities didn't include European frequencies and I would have had to import a sim-modded device myself. Anyway, the PRIV turned out to be a really fine piece of hardware – even though BlackBerry stopped distributing security updates just a few weeks after I bought it...

Later I decided to switch to a Moto Z, when the first prototypes of the Livermorium Keyboard Mod had just been reviewed and the long awaited accessory which I had backed very early on Indiegogo seemed to be ready to be shipped. It wasn't to be, as we all know. Still, I continued with the Moto Z due to lack of other options (I wouldn't go back to BlackBerry), amassed quite a few "mods" like power packs, JBL speakers or the brazenly Hasselblad-branded True Zoom camera mod and upgraded to the Moto Z3 Play after the original Z's undersized battery failed for the second time (I had already had it replaced once by a local smartphone repair shop). 

All of which now will be sold off as soon as I get my hands on the Pro¹!

By the way, I never doubted F(x)tec's integrity, seriousness and professionalism even once, after they refunded everyone (including me) who asked for it after the keyboard mod didn't make it, and I hardly hesitated to order the Pro¹ when it appeared on my favourite German IT news site golem.de (which reviewed it very favourably) in early September.

Cheers,
Robert

Edited November 19, 2019 by Rob. S.

[Rob. S. 1,660]

22 hours ago, divstar said:

[...] also own a PRIV. The latter wasn't that great, because whenever I needed performance, it quickly became too hot [...]

It didn't happen to me often, but now that you mention it I remember that it failed once or twice when I needed it really badly – like driving by Google Maps on a hot day searching a location in Berlin for which I was already late (where I don't know my way around, I am not a Berliner) :-D

[silversolver 849]

On 11/6/2019 at 9:10 PM, 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 :).

I'll take on anyone anytime. I still have a physical keyboard on my Droid 4, and will assuredly not be using anything else until my Pro1 arrives. I'm using it now....I've had lots of practice. :)

[silversolver 849]

On 11/7/2019 at 12:30 AM, Flash-a-holic said:

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).

 

Very familiar. I'm using one now, LOS14. Good enough for the moment until the preciousssssss......er, Pro1 gets to me. :)

[netman 1,424]

15 minutes ago, silversolver said:

I'll take on anyone anytime. I still have a physical keyboard on my Droid 4, and will assuredly not be using anything else until my Pro1 arrives. I'm using it now....I've had lots of practice. 🙂

On my touchscreen slab i won't even try xD. And damn that picture made me think xiaomi made a keyboard slider there for a moment, that's a good looking bluetooth kbd :D.

[altwouss 22]

Nokia N900 and a HP Pre3. The cool thing about the Pre3 was that it was possible use just one hand to type if you wanted to.

[Chris 27]

Had a droid 4 and have been waiting for something high end to replace it ... my hands are too big for the blackberry's vertical form factor

[MickH 211]

Had a few Keyboard smartphones.

Started with the N73 (can you call that a smartphone?)
Then the Nokia N95-8GB
Then went on to the Nokia N900. Absolutely loved that phone, so bought another 1. ❤️
Next I went on to a Jolla 1 with the TOHKBD. Quirky as hell that set up 😂
Next was a Sony Xperia X re-flashed with SailfishX.

Now I'm on the Pro1, but still using the Xperia X as my main phone at the moment.

[silversolver 849]

7 hours ago, MickH said:

Had a few Keyboard smartphones.

Started with the N73 (can you call that a smartphone?)
Then the Nokia N95-8GB
Then went on to the Nokia N900. Absolutely loved that phone, so bought another 1. ❤️
Next I went on to a Jolla 1 with the TOHKBD. Quirky as hell that set up 😂
Next was a Sony Xperia X re-flashed with SailfishX.

Now I'm on the Pro1, but still using the Xperia X as my main phone at the moment.

Get it exactly the way you like it, then switch to it daily. :)