Size of phone

[Bronwyn 0]

I miss my LG Optimus Chat, will there ever be a Fxtec phone for people with much smaller hands?

[_DW_ 628]

Why I loved my N97 nice and compact.   I hope they do a mini version of the Pro1 I think it would have a market, when I say mini am thinking 5" max size.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

20 minutes ago, _DW_ said:

Why I loved my N97 nice and compact.   I hope they do a mini version of the Pro1 I think it would have a market, when I say mini am thinking 5" max size.

You mean the N97mini or the huge N97 ? Compared

[_DW_ 628]

32 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

You mean the N97mini or the huge N97 ? Compared

The huge N97 but I didn't class it as huge was just right 🙂

 

[enPfzr4v 239]

I was hoping the next device would go in the other direction, and be larger! I love the 6.4" screen on my current slab phone, and am probably going to miss it.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

7 minutes ago, abielins said:

I was hoping the next device would go in the other direction, and be larger! I love the 6.4" screen on my current slab phone, and am probably going to miss it.

Let us hope that it will be such a huge success, that it makes room for variants, and not one model only.... Different people, different usage patterns, different needs/wishes.

[_DW_ 628]

A 9" tablet with a slide out keyboard 😄  tbh not sure how that would work.....

[david 929]

3 minutes ago, _DW_ said:

A 9" tablet with a slide out keyboard 😄  tbh not sure how that would work.....

Or the room sized version, where it takes 2 people to type on it:

 

[FlyingAntero 869]

19 hours ago, _DW_ said:

A 9" tablet with a slide out keyboard 😄  tbh not sure how that would work.....

I think that it would work pretty much same way like Dell's 7'' QWERTY tablet.

 

[_DW_ 628]

See I don't own a tablet that would possibly persuade me 😄

[redacted 1]

I would also like a smaller size - something I commented on at the hands-on event in London in June.

I am very tempted by the Pro1, but it's just so big, so am making do with the Blackberry Android phones for the time being.

I still miss my Desire Z.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

33 minutes ago, redacted said:

I would also like a smaller size - something I commented on at the hands-on event in London in June.

I am very tempted by the Pro1, but it's just so big, so am making do with the Blackberry Android phones for the time being.

I still miss my Desire Z.

The Priv is 147 x 77.2 x 9.4 mm 

The Pro1 is 154 x 73.6 x 13.98 mm

So really not that much bigger. It is actually substantially less wide, making it less bad for one hand operation - though still too big for my hands.

On the other hand you get a full keyboard in the right direction.

The price for that, the solid metal build, and the 15% larger display is that the Priv is 20% less heavy.,.

[Craig 1,435]

It might make an interesting poll, to see who would prefer smaller, same, or bigger.  Early on, most everyone wanted smaller, that guy above is the first who' has mentioned wanting bigger, and my guess is he hasn't used a keyboard phone before.   I personally think pro1 is going to be a little too big, that's why the layout is "shifted" s try to deal with it being too big to be perfectly comfortable.   I'd imagine 5.25 screen is around ideal size.  But, maybe when I get pro1, I will get used to it and not mind how big it is, I haven't had my hands on it yet.    In my experience, Photon Q keyboard is quite comfortable - certainly not to small, and I'm big guy (6'2" 189cm), but screen a little too small for some stuff today, and certainly too much bezel. 

 

Also remember its a diagonal measurement, 6" 2:1 is bigger than 6" 16:9.    

(and maybe if I'm bored in a min I'll do the math to figure out if its bigger than 6.4" 16:9)

[EskeRahn 5,459]

3 hours ago, Craig said:

It might make an interesting poll, to see who would prefer smaller, same, or bigger.  Early on, most everyone wanted smaller, that guy above is the first who' has mentioned wanting bigger, and my guess is he hasn't used a keyboard phone before.   I personally think pro1 is going to be a little too big, that's why the layout is "shifted" s try to deal with it being too big to be perfectly comfortable.   I'd imagine 5.25 screen is around ideal size.  But, maybe when I get pro1, I will get used to it and not mind how big it is, I haven't had my hands on it yet.    In my experience, Photon Q keyboard is quite comfortable - certainly not to small, and I'm big guy (6'2" 189cm), but screen a little too small for some stuff today, and certainly too much bezel. 

 

Also remember its a diagonal measurement, 6" 2:1 is bigger than 6" 16:9.    

(and maybe if I'm bored in a min I'll do the math to figure out if its bigger than 6.4" 16:9)

We have seen people in here wanting it even huger before. As well as smaller. I think FxTec have done a long deliberation on the size before settling on the 6" 2:1.

Already people are calling the whole real keyboard thing an attempt to return to the past, and we would have had more of that if the screen was smaller.

Personally I would have preferred it smaller, but I think that would have limited their market even more to the segments of old dinosaurs (like my self).

Try to think of it in a different aspect: Will the huger size wheel in more young people than loosing old dinosaurs?

I have asked myself how huge it should have been for me NOT buying it. And though I do not have an exact answer to that, then I (with whining and kicking) most likely would still have bought it at 7"... Have I had the choice, Sure I personally would have preferred all dimensions reduced by say 10%.

On the "diagonal measurement, 6" 2:1 is bigger than 6" 16:9. ", Actually 6% lesser area, a substantially 9% less on the critical short edge, but a is 2.6% larger on the long edge

Roughly a 6" 2:1 is 136x68mm and a 6" 16:9 is 133x75mm

a 6.4" 16:9 is 142x80mm

(The 5.99" 2:1 has the same long edge as a 6.15" 16:9, and the same short edge as a 5.46" 16:9 )

[Craig 1,435]

You're awesome at clarifying specifics.

[Craig 1,435]

I do agree the 6" size is good for sales, even if me and a few dinosaurs prefer smaller, and I understand and agree with FXtec's reason for that.  Still not sure about the curved screen tho....  but I like the no bezels, make maximal use of that area.

[_DW_ 628]

6" is limit for me I wouldn't buy if it was bigger.

[netman 1,424]

1 hour ago, _DW_ said:

6" is limit for me I wouldn't buy if it was bigger.

I am in the same camp, yet I am glad they made it as big as it is at the same time... It seems to be a good size, bigger screen is nicer but at some point it becomes inconvenient to handle so to me it makes sense to go for approx the maximum size that is practical.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

2 hours ago, Craig said:

I do agree the 6" size is good for sales, even if me and a few dinosaurs prefer smaller, and I understand and agree with FXtec's reason for that.  Still not sure about the curved screen tho....  but I like the no bezels, make maximal use of that area.

I have it exactly he same way, And I have (until now in vain) tried to persuade them to make a firmware/software fix for that. In the simplest form, simply have a logical lesser size with 'dead' edges of user selectable size. I can not imagine that it would be hard to do, and would make both user groups happy. It would be best if they did not have to be the same in portrait and landscape, but even if the same.

Let us say we choose 4mm dead zones at both edges, that would leave us with a flat LOGICAL screen of 136x60mm that is a 5.85" 20.4 : 9 with the odd  2160x952.

In the advanced variants of this, they MIGHT find a way to use these dead areas for information purpose.
E.g. the bottom edge could be used for word suggestions in landscape

[david 929]

10 hours ago, Craig said:

Still not sure about the curved screen tho....  but I like the no bezels, make maximal use of that area.

I wasn't overjoyed with the size, but am glad it wasn't 7", like @EskeRahn commented on.  I would have bought it, but I would have been very upset at that being my only option for a keyboard phone. 

I really was, and still am, disappointed at the curved screen.  It may have been the only type of screen available at the time and in that size range and they could have tried to spin it as looking better, but didn't pick it for aesthetics. 

But if it was hand picked, then I don't agree with the choice for a phone that doesn't have bezels and will be very naked when opened and where people want to hold onto it for a long time.  The only benefit is that we can hopefully easily get replacement screens to cover our accidents. 

I'd even pick bezels on a flat screen, if there is no case available, jut for the protection effect.  

I do know that looking at the distorted top and bottom (when in landscape mode, sides when in portrait mode) is going to upset me every time I see it.  The firmware-reduced screen size seems like a relatively easy way to satisfy people who don't like the curved screen.  I wonder if there is a way to do this with a rooted phone?

I just googled around and found this:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chornerman.easydpichanger&hl=en_US  

My phone doesn't have a new enough version of Android to try it out.  Anyone else want to try it on a rooted phone and report back whether it does what we want?

[david 929]

6 hours ago, david said:

I just googled around and found this:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chornerman.easydpichanger&hl=en_US  

My phone doesn't have a new enough version of Android to try it out.  Anyone else want to try it on a rooted phone and report back whether it does what we want?

I remembered that I have a tablet that is rooted.  It sort of worked, but it wasn't perfect.  I told it to pad 200 pixels on the top and right.  With the tablet in portrait mode, that was the right and bottom.  It was correct when held in landscape.  So it is not relative to how you are holding it.  You would have to trim all sides by the amount that you want the curved sides to be trimmed.  Some apps still had a background that went past the trimmed part, but the user interface of the applications were still within it.  The launcher cut off the icons of the app icons too.  If it was only done a small number of pixels to deal with the curved screen issue, maybe the glitches would be minimal.

Also, some things that work well on phones don't work as well on tablets.  If someone else wants to try it on a phone, that would be a better test.

IMPORTANT Update:  I just tried changing the resolution using the app and things started crashing.  The Samsung keyboard and the Touchwiz UI and System UI crashed.  This put me in a non-recoverable state!  I only had had the default recovery on the phone, so I couldn't get to the app's files to manually uninstall it, and I couldn't run a single app or getting into settings when booted into Android.  I couldn't use ADB, because it was saying the pc was unauthorized (not sure if usb debugging is turned on or what is going on there).

I finally managed to flash TWRP.  Samsung tried to deny booting into it, but it finally did go into TWRP and I was able to use the file manager in TWRP to delete the Easy DPI Changer program.  I then wiped the dalvik cache and rebooted.  It recompiled the apps, but I still got, "Unfortunately, System UI has stopped."

The problem is that it changed the values in the system somewhere and I can't run the commands from adb to undo this, because I guess usb debugging isn't on or something.  I'm trying to find and edit the build.prop file to enable usb debugging.  That file should be in the \system folder, but on this SM-P600 tablet, I can't see any files in the \system folder when in TWRP.  I'm continuing to try to get this tablet running, but in the meantime, I wanted to put this warning out there for others.

Moral of the story:  Be very careful using that app to change the resolution.  Changing the padding didn't cause these problems. Only trying to change the resolution (which did sort of seem to have a similar effect of putting a border on the top on and bottom of the screen (but not all sides, like it should have)) caused the problems.  It could be just a Samsung thing, but you've been warned. :-)

 

 

Edited November 12, 2019 by david

[EskeRahn 5,459]

16 hours ago, Craig said:

You're awesome at clarifying specifics.

Oh this reminds me, many years ago I was suggested, that if I ever wrote my memoirs, to call it "How to make easy things complicated - volume one to eleven". 😇

[B.X 19]

18 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

We have seen people in here wanting it even huger before. As well as smaller.

You can count me in the group that would like it larger, not smaller.  I also find that "Large" gloves don't fit most of the time so phones are not the only thing that could be bigger.

The 154mm total width would be pretty good as the width for just the letters and would be less than 10mm smaller than a standard keyboard for the letters.  Unfortunately they put empty space on both sides plus 4 more keys in each row so the net size of the letters is just about half that of a standard keyboard.  No matter what, this will be dramatically better than a screen keyboard, so I placed my $700 bet but larger keys would be an improvement and just another half inch larger screen could allow for true full size keys!

In reality, the curved screen is my largest complaint about the phone itself.  When I pre-ordered, we were still being promised a flat screen.  I had a curved screen for a few weeks and hated it, my only hope here is that the really thick body will make the curve less annoying.  Fortunately I expect there will be quite the used market on ebay for awhile if the curve is just unusable.

 

[david 929]

5 hours ago, david said:

I remembered that I have a tablet that is rooted.  It sort of worked, but it wasn't perfect.  I told it to pad 200 pixels on the top and right.  With the tablet in portrait mode, that was the right and bottom.  It was correct when held in landscape.  So it is not relative to how you are holding it.  You would have to trim all sides by the amount that you want the curved sides to be trimmed.  Some apps still had a background that went past the trimmed part, but the user interface of the applications were still within it.  The launcher cut off the icons of the app icons too.  If it was only done a small number of pixels to deal with the curved screen issue, maybe the glitches would be minimal.

Also, some things that work well on phones don't work as well on tablets.  If someone else wants to try it on a phone, that would be a better test.

IMPORTANT Update:  I just tried changing the resolution using the app and things started crashing.  The Samsung keyboard and the Touchwiz UI and System UI crashed.  This put me in a non-recoverable state!  I only had had the default recovery on the phone, so I couldn't get to the app's files to manually uninstall it, and I couldn't run a single app or getting into settings when booted into Android.  I couldn't use ADB, because it was saying the pc was unauthorized (not sure if usb debugging is turned on or what is going on there).

I finally managed to flash TWRP.  Samsung tried to deny booting into it, but it finally did go into TWRP and I was able to use the file manager in TWRP to delete the Easy DPI Changer program.  I then wiped the dalvik cache and rebooted.  It recompiled the apps, but I still got, "Unfortunately, System UI has stopped."

The problem is that it changed the values in the system somewhere and I can't run the commands from adb to undo this, because I guess usb debugging isn't on or something.  I'm trying to find and edit the build.prop file to enable usb debugging.  That file should be in the \system folder, but on this SM-P600 tablet, I can't see any files in the \system folder when in TWRP.  I'm continuing to try to get this tablet running, but in the meantime, I wanted to put this warning out there for others.

Moral of the story:  Be very careful using that app to change the resolution.  Changing the padding didn't cause these problems. Only trying to change the resolution (which did sort of seem to have a similar effect of putting a border on the top on and bottom of the screen (but not all sides, like it should have)) caused the problems.  It could be just a Samsung thing, but you've been warned. :-)

 

 

Update:  The tablet is still messed up.  I've been at it for hours.  I took a nandroid backup with TWRP of the system partition and then extracted the build.prop file with 7zip in Windows (after changing the file extension to .tar).  Unfortunately there are 2 duplicate filenames in the tar file, with one containing the security information for the file.  This means that I couldn't put the file back with 7zip, due to the duplicate file.  I deleted the file containing the security information and then restored the backup in TWRP, but it got stuck in a boot loop.  I tried creating a local.prop file in /data/ with the usb debugging related lines in it, but that didn't work either.  That method has possibly been deprecated.

I'm now downloading the supposed stock firmware online and I'll flash that with odin and then have to reroot the device.  I'm very tempted to flash lineageos on this thing, but there isn't a currently supported version of that for this device.  There is one that has been abandoned and I don't know how stable it was when it was abandoned.

I don't recommend anyone use that app to change your screen resolution! :-)

[VaZso 1,998]

1 hour ago, david said:

Unfortunately there are 2 duplicate filenames in the tar file, with one containing the security information for the file.  This means that I couldn't put the file back with 7zip, due to the duplicate file.

Do these files have different case of characters (lower case and capitals in the name) which are different in these files?

Under Linux, those types of files are treated as different, but under Windows, they are the same (duplicate names).

You may try to modify it under Linux.