Selling my Pro1

[sequestris 710]

@david Mine is a Sidekick 4G circa 2011. Still kicking.

[david 929]

23 minutes ago, sequestris said:

@david Mine is a Sidekick 4G circa 2011. Still kicking.

Yep, the only Android version, I believe.  Wish they would have kept making them and supporting future versions of Android and with more memory and CPU.

[sequestris 710]

14 minutes ago, david said:

Yep, the only Android version, I believe.  Wish they would have kept making them and supporting future versions of Android and with more memory and CPU.

I didn't know that was the only Android version. Mine is stuck on FroYo.
Apps started to not work anymore - nothing was supported.

It's sort of where my KitKat Nexus is heading.
Hope the new and improved Pro1 I will be receiving in June will be just the thing.

[silversolver 849]

21 minutes ago, sequestris said:

I didn't know that was the only Android version. Mine is stuck on FroYo.
Apps started to not work anymore - nothing was supported.

It's sort of where my KitKat Nexus is heading.
Hope the new and improved Pro1 I will be receiving in June will be just the thing.

Haha, it won't be that long. 🙂

[david 929]

1 hour ago, sequestris said:

I didn't know that was the only Android version. Mine is stuck on FroYo.
Apps started to not work anymore - nothing was supported.

Yeah, the older Sidekicks ran Danger OS.  It was a custom OS made, oddly enough, by Danger Incorporated, the maker of the phone.  Most were manufactured by Sharp for Danger Inc.

1 hour ago, sequestris said:

It's sort of where my KitKat Nexus is heading.

Isn't there a newer LineageOS for that?

1 hour ago, sequestris said:

Hope the new and improved Pro1 I will be receiving in June will be just the thing.

HA!  

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

6 hours ago, silversolver said:

Well, productivity is king! I'm sure the shifted layout was chosen for that very reason.

Once F(x)tec gets out of crunch time, they have already said they'll look at other keyboard layouts, such as scandic. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of clamoring for it would motivate the production of a non-shifted version. Creating a new keyboard is a lot less of a time and effort investment than a whole new device.

Perhaps in the long run the current layout offerings of shifted-QWERTY and standard-QWERTZ will be expanded to include scandic, unshifted-QWERTY, and who knows what else? A new keyboard die can't be that expensive (can it?) and creating a keymap for it is all software work that could be banged out in a few hours.

It was not part of this discussion but the biggest problem for me is that secondary functions are used with the yellow arrow not shift. This is so uncommon that I would have long to get used to it. But FinQwerty solves that problem greatly!

[ksal95 227]

4 hours ago, david said:

I will say that my Sidekicks (Sidekick 3 and Sidekick 2008, neither Android, unlike the above example) were the best keyboards on phones I've ever used.  

Sidekick 3:

Sidekick 2008:

 

My friend had all three, I was extremely jealous of him.

Edited December 24, 2019 by ksal95

[fxtec5 18]

First of all, all of you guys saying the sidekick had the best slider keyboard are _wrong_. The droid 4 had *and still has* the best slider keyboard ever. 😁

 

Second of all, the ebay phone arrived today in one piece! Getting it to work on verizon was a piece of cake, see the verizon thread for more details

 

Finally - congrats to fxtec to producing a product and shipping it, even if they did produce a very mediocre product and shipped it months after they said they did. That said, I certainly won't recommend the pro1 to anyone but those sufficiently attached to a keyboard that they are currently using one of the existing ancient sliders, since it is a genuinely terrible phone with literally the only redeeming being the keyboard--which is mediocre. On the whole the pro1 is better than the droid 4, but only marginally since the droid 4 has a much more comfortable keyboard and if it was capable of interacting with the modern web I would still be using it.

 

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

33 minutes ago, fxtec5 said:

First of all, all of you guys saying the sidekick had the best slider keyboard are _wrong_. The droid 4 had *and still has* the best slider keyboard ever. 😁

 

Second of all, the ebay phone arrived today in one piece! Getting it to work on verizon was a piece of cake, see the verizon thread for more details

 

Finally - congrats to fxtec to producing a product and shipping it, even if they did produce a very mediocre product and shipped it months after they said they did. That said, I certainly won't recommend the pro1 to anyone but those sufficiently attached to a keyboard that they are currently using one of the existing ancient sliders, since it is a genuinely terrible phone with literally the only redeeming being the keyboard--which is mediocre. On the whole the pro1 is better than the droid 4, but only marginally since the droid 4 has a much more comfortable keyboard and if it was capable of interacting with the modern web I would still be using it.

 

Why do you think it is a terrible phone? A lot of people, me included, do not agree with this opinion. So it would help to explain a little further, we may even be able to help you over some issues.

[silversolver 849]

16 hours ago, fxtec5 said:

First of all, all of you guys saying the sidekick had the best slider keyboard are _wrong_. The droid 4 had *and still has* the best slider keyboard ever. 😁

 

Second of all, the ebay phone arrived today in one piece! Getting it to work on verizon was a piece of cake, see the verizon thread for more details

 

Finally - congrats to fxtec to producing a product and shipping it, even if they did produce a very mediocre product and shipped it months after they said they did. That said, I certainly won't recommend the pro1 to anyone but those sufficiently attached to a keyboard that they are currently using one of the existing ancient sliders, since it is a genuinely terrible phone with literally the only redeeming being the keyboard--which is mediocre. On the whole the pro1 is better than the droid 4, but only marginally since the droid 4 has a much more comfortable keyboard and if it was capable of interacting with the modern web I would still be using it.

 

I have and love a Droid 4, and mine IS capable of interacting with the modern Web thanks to LineageOS and Brave, but there are other issues with it that make its days numbered. The biggest problem is that it cannot do VoLTE, which is the direction Verizon (the only carrier to offer Droid 4 AFAIK) is going, so it will become WiFi only eventually. Add to that the fact that it has only 1GB of RAM, 1/8th of which is reserved for things like the video chip, and it labors through modern programs (I refuse to call them apps because it sounds stupid.) It is still usable, and I do, although I'm on a loo....er, PRIV at the moment due to battery life constraints, which are also a challenge on my D4 because it is working so hard, and also has seen a lot of charge cycles.....overall, I have no doubt that the clack will be a fabulous upgrade. The keyboard can't be worse than this Priv.

The only thing I've heard is mediocre about the clack is its stock ROM, which is admittedly a bit of a work-in-progress, but it improves with every update, and several community developers are making SailFish and LineageOS for it, so I strongly suspect that in a year or so it will be top-of-class for software polish, and then it will be as close as we get to perfection in a phone. 🙂

Edited December 28, 2019 by silversolver
My PRIV thinks we're discussing Polish software...

[EskeRahn 5,460]

9 minutes ago, silversolver said:

modern programs (I refuse to call them apps because it sounds stupid.)

...At the least it is not as silly as calling the Android Market by its current official loony name. 🥴

[silversolver 849]

1 minute ago, EskeRahn said:

...At the least it is not as silly as calling the Android Market by its current official loony name. 🥴

Yeah, what looney toon decided people should get their productivity programs from a "play store" ? Truly pandering to the mindless consumers of drivel.

Call it a market or a playground I don't use it. I never have and never will. I load everything from the APK. My daily driver doesn't have any GcrApps at all. APKs and desktop Web sites! 🙂

[Rob. S. 1,660]

9 hours ago, silversolver said:

modern programs (I refuse to call them apps because it sounds stupid.)

Among developers, "app" used to be a short form for any kind of "application software program" long before smartphones even existed. There's nothing stupid in it per se, but there's indeed some stupidness in reserving the short form to exclusively denote mobile software...

[silversolver 849]

2 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

Among developers, "app" used to be a short form for any kind of "application software program" long before smartphones even existed. There's nothing stupid in it per se, but there's indeed some stupidness in reserving the short form to exclusively denote mobile software...

My original Droid on FroYo (which also sounds stupid.....Mr. Baggins?) calls them Applications. Elegant, like everything else about that phone. It was a phone from an era where productivity was King, and consumers of mindless drivel weren't the sole focus of R&D at all the major phone makers.

I'm glad F(x)tec is still like Motorola was in 2008, and maybe even better. Productivity is King.

[Rob. S. 1,660]

@silversolver Yes, I guess i see what you mean, and personally I am a fan of functional design that doesn't get in the way of what I want to accomplish, too. 

On the other hand, I'm not a general fan of productivity pe se. It's bad enough that the consciousless drive to increase productivity (as one of the major methods to increase profits) haunts virtually every workplace. After work, I'd rather like to see things like fun as the maxim 😉  

Economically, by the way, every increase in productivity reduces the value of the produced goods. Which is the major reason why, in an economic system that needs and drives technological progress, growth is mandatory. So, productivity sits at core of the central socio-economic and ecological problems all industrial societies are facing in this era we live in.

Edited December 28, 2019 by Rob. S.

[Polaris 423]

2 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

Economically, by the way, every increase in productivity reduces the value of the produced goods.

For me, the increase in productivity [generated by the Pro1] increases the value of its produced good, and hence it's worth (which is why I can justify paying $700 for it). 😉

Edited December 28, 2019 by Polaris

[fxtec5 18]

Quote

Why do you think it is a terrible phone? A lot of people, me included, do not agree with this opinion. So it would help to explain a little further, we may even be able to help you over some issues.

Having used the phone for a weekend now, here are my grievances listed in order of severity:

Hardware issues:

1. Function keys. Who thought this was a good idea?!?! If they had just put the ?/ key where the right function key is, they could have completely eliminated them and used a standard QWERTY layout. I am investigating options to remap the keys, but the keycaps are wrong and from what I understand not replaceable even if fxtec came out with a sane qwerty layout.

2. Lack of verizon support. The pro1 was clearly advertised as being compatible with verizon, yet is not actually supported in verizon. I have managed to get it halfway working, but coverage is terrible and sms delivery is intermittent. "Messages" shows an error "no SMS connection" all of the time, and sometimes messages come through but now always. I am currently investigating options to migrating to a different carrier since the whole reason I wanted a keyboard phone was for messaging and I need reliable SMS capability.

3. Keyboard spacing - the keyboard is too long to efficiently type on. I don't exactly have small hands, but I am often overextending my thumb to get to the keys in the middle of the keyboard. I also have issues with missing keystrokes, and for whatever reason the spellchecker only catches about half of them. Hopefully I will get used to it, but missing keystrokes is a really annoying failure mode for a keyboard and kills typing efficiency. If I ignore missing keys I am up into the 40-50wpm range for unformulated text, but with even simple formatted text I am down in the 10-20wpm range due to the terrible shift layout and missing keys that seem related to my relocating my fingers going from shift/function back to the home row. It also doesn't help that there are no home row bumps on the f/j keys so when you loose your footing there is no option but to look down at your fingers.

4. Phone is gigantic. I mentioned this before, which makes not only awkward to type on (need to bend wrists to get to fgh keys) but also a beast to carry around. It is the same thickness but much larger/heaver than my droid 4 or even the priv. I really hope the pro2 comes in closer to the size of the droid 4 because if they make it any larger you may as well just get an ultraportable laptop with real keys. I appreciate that it has a larger battery, but if the screen were smaller it wouldn't be necessary to have such a large battery.

5. Curved screen. The touch region of the curved screen comes into the number key region, and I am constantly creating false touches while typing. I hope that they are going to be able to fix this in software, honestly at this point I would rather have the phone configured to have the outer few millimeters of the screen blanked off and touch disabled so they always show black and the curved edge are effectively removed from the screen. Also, the color temperature varies wildly with brightness changes, so when auto-brightness control is enabled websites color pallets drift like crazy as the room lighting changes. It is especially noticeable on off-white websites like news.ycombinator.com

6. Notification LED is way to bright. I can use it as a flashlight at night, and see it through the fabric of my pockets... I am working on a way to add some black ink over the led to tone it down to a more reasonable level.

7. Middling processor. It has a snapdragon 835 which would have been a good processor back when the kickstarter was happening, but current gen phones in this price class have literally double the processing performance. It is still an order of magnitude more responsive than the droid 4, but at the rate we are getting keyboard phones these days I would have liked to see fxtec future proof this a bit better so that it stays usable until the pro2 comes out in the mid 2030's. (sarcasm)

8. Serial number label on the back. It looks like a serious afterthought, and the ink on my label is already starting to get worn off even though I have only had the phone for a weekend. I already peeled it off--luckily the adhesive comes off nicely. Why didn't they put it on the inside of the hinge?

9. Keyboard backlight is really uneven. It is functional, but the phone looks like the keys have been worn down or something and it distracts from the overall image. In particular ' and " are basically completely dark on my device.

10. Sim tray is really scratchy. I have used other phones with the same style sim tray and they weren't nearly this bad. Honestly it feels like I am inserting the tray in upside down or something--maybe there is some kind of misalignment between the outer case and the contacts in the phone on my device? I have a single active sim which I swap between several devices as appropriate and I am worried I am going to wear out of straight up smash the sim tray after the first few swaps.

Software issues: Maybe these will be fixed with time?

11. Lack of 3rd party OS. The marketing material prominently shows sailfish and lineage compatibility, but neither of these are actually usable. Hopefully the community will be able to get them working, but it is looking more and more likely that official sailfish support (and with it, the ability to emulate android) is never coming because that would require effort on fxtec's part. I specifically bought this phone to run sailfish and am highly disappointed that nearly 6 months after the phones release they still do not have a working sailfish port. It is amazing how far the community has come, but given the small userbase of these devices the community is also small and can only get so much done without official support.

12. Camera is terrible. Using the stock camera I cannot actually take pictures (after pressing shutter soft or hard button the screen blinks, but does not save a file) and the front camera is not even detected (pressing the flip button causes the screen to momentarily go blank, but then the camera resets to the rear camera). Using gcam the cameras both work, but it takes over 30 seconds to get an image (after starting gcam, the image is frozen for about 30 seconds before the camera starts to work), and the hard shutter button doesn't work. At least the front camera works so I know it is not a hardware problem. Yes I am running the most recent firmware.

13. Lack of a multiboot bootloader. As far as I can tell there is no way to have multiple roms loaded on the phone, which is a bummer. On my droid 4 I used safestrap which allowed me to swap between the stock android, a modern version of cyanogen, and an older cut down version of cyanogen without gapps. I really miss this feature, and dearly hope that the ability to run multiple roms will be added to the bootloader soon. It would really take the edge off of the unfinished Sailfish build if I could also have a working version of android with me in case I run into trouble.

14. Keyboard backlight doesn't work correctly. If the screen locks, you have to close the phone and re-open it and unlock it to get the keyboard backlight back on. Especially annoying since there are no homerow bumps so blind typing is nearly impossible. I also haven't found a way to get the phone to unlock on opening the keyboard, which would be a nice feature.

I can write another post on the positive aspects but it sounds like you guys already know them all. In the mean time my thumbs are tired

[Guest]

4 hours ago, fxtec5 said:

Having used the phone for a weekend now, here are my grievances listed in order of severity:

Hardware issues:

1. Function keys. Who thought this was a good idea?!?! If they had just put the ?/ key where the right function key is, they could have completely eliminated them and used a standard QWERTY layout. I am investigating options to remap the keys, but the keycaps are wrong and from what I understand not replaceable even if fxtec came out with a sane qwerty layout.

2. Lack of verizon support. The pro1 was clearly advertised as being compatible with verizon, yet is not actually supported in verizon. I have managed to get it halfway working, but coverage is terrible and sms delivery is intermittent. "Messages" shows an error "no SMS connection" all of the time, and sometimes messages come through but now always. I am currently investigating options to migrating to a different carrier since the whole reason I wanted a keyboard phone was for messaging and I need reliable SMS capability.

3. Keyboard spacing - the keyboard is too long to efficiently type on. I don't exactly have small hands, but I am often overextending my thumb to get to the keys in the middle of the keyboard. I also have issues with missing keystrokes, and for whatever reason the spellchecker only catches about half of them. Hopefully I will get used to it, but missing keystrokes is a really annoying failure mode for a keyboard and kills typing efficiency. If I ignore missing keys I am up into the 40-50wpm range for unformulated text, but with even simple formatted text I am down in the 10-20wpm range due to the terrible shift layout and missing keys that seem related to my relocating my fingers going from shift/function back to the home row. It also doesn't help that there are no home row bumps on the f/j keys so when you loose your footing there is no option but to look down at your fingers.

4. Phone is gigantic. I mentioned this before, which makes not only awkward to type on (need to bend wrists to get to fgh keys) but also a beast to carry around. It is the same thickness but much larger/heaver than my droid 4 or even the priv. I really hope the pro2 comes in closer to the size of the droid 4 because if they make it any larger you may as well just get an ultraportable laptop with real keys. I appreciate that it has a larger battery, but if the screen were smaller it wouldn't be necessary to have such a large battery.

5. Curved screen. The touch region of the curved screen comes into the number key region, and I am constantly creating false touches while typing. I hope that they are going to be able to fix this in software, honestly at this point I would rather have the phone configured to have the outer few millimeters of the screen blanked off and touch disabled so they always show black and the curved edge are effectively removed from the screen. Also, the color temperature varies wildly with brightness changes, so when auto-brightness control is enabled websites color pallets drift like crazy as the room lighting changes. It is especially noticeable on off-white websites like news.ycombinator.com

6. Notification LED is way to bright. I can use it as a flashlight at night, and see it through the fabric of my pockets... I am working on a way to add some black ink over the led to tone it down to a more reasonable level.

7. Middling processor. It has a snapdragon 835 which would have been a good processor back when the kickstarter was happening, but current gen phones in this price class have literally double the processing performance. It is still an order of magnitude more responsive than the droid 4, but at the rate we are getting keyboard phones these days I would have liked to see fxtec future proof this a bit better so that it stays usable until the pro2 comes out in the mid 2030's. (sarcasm)

8. Serial number label on the back. It looks like a serious afterthought, and the ink on my label is already starting to get worn off even though I have only had the phone for a weekend. I already peeled it off--luckily the adhesive comes off nicely. Why didn't they put it on the inside of the hinge?

9. Keyboard backlight is really uneven. It is functional, but the phone looks like the keys have been worn down or something and it distracts from the overall image. In particular ' and " are basically completely dark on my device.

10. Sim tray is really scratchy. I have used other phones with the same style sim tray and they weren't nearly this bad. Honestly it feels like I am inserting the tray in upside down or something--maybe there is some kind of misalignment between the outer case and the contacts in the phone on my device? I have a single active sim which I swap between several devices as appropriate and I am worried I am going to wear out of straight up smash the sim tray after the first few swaps.

Software issues: Maybe these will be fixed with time?

11. Lack of 3rd party OS. The marketing material prominently shows sailfish and lineage compatibility, but neither of these are actually usable. Hopefully the community will be able to get them working, but it is looking more and more likely that official sailfish support (and with it, the ability to emulate android) is never coming because that would require effort on fxtec's part. I specifically bought this phone to run sailfish and am highly disappointed that nearly 6 months after the phones release they still do not have a working sailfish port. It is amazing how far the community has come, but given the small userbase of these devices the community is also small and can only get so much done without official support.

12. Camera is terrible. Using the stock camera I cannot actually take pictures (after pressing shutter soft or hard button the screen blinks, but does not save a file) and the front camera is not even detected (pressing the flip button causes the screen to momentarily go blank, but then the camera resets to the rear camera). Using gcam the cameras both work, but it takes over 30 seconds to get an image (after starting gcam, the image is frozen for about 30 seconds before the camera starts to work), and the hard shutter button doesn't work. At least the front camera works so I know it is not a hardware problem. Yes I am running the most recent firmware.

13. Lack of a multiboot bootloader. As far as I can tell there is no way to have multiple roms loaded on the phone, which is a bummer. On my droid 4 I used safestrap which allowed me to swap between the stock android, a modern version of cyanogen, and an older cut down version of cyanogen without gapps. I really miss this feature, and dearly hope that the ability to run multiple roms will be added to the bootloader soon. It would really take the edge off of the unfinished Sailfish build if I could also have a working version of android with me in case I run into trouble.

14. Keyboard backlight doesn't work correctly. If the screen locks, you have to close the phone and re-open it and unlock it to get the keyboard backlight back on. Especially annoying since there are no homerow bumps so blind typing is nearly impossible. I also haven't found a way to get the phone to unlock on opening the keyboard, which would be a nice feature.

I can write another post on the positive aspects but it sounds like you guys already know them all. In the mean time my thumbs are tired

interesting.

Edited December 31, 2019 by Guest

[kthxbye 71]

@fxtec5

Regarding your point 5. according to evildragon's setup guide at

https://www.dragonbox.de/index.php?fc=module&module=ybc_blog&controller=blog&id_post=9

If you install the app Edge Null it should be solved (not the color issue though and yes the decision to use a curved screen was weird at best)

[VaZso 1,998]

2 hours ago, kthxbye said:

If you install the app Edge Null it should be solved (not the color issue though and yes the decision to use a curved screen was weird at best)

It seems to be a good solution in portrait mode but unfortunately not in landscape as it applies to short edges then and there is no need to null at those edges but the long side in that mode.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

9 hours ago, fxtec5 said:

1. Function keys. Who thought this was a good idea?!?! If they had just put the ?/ key where the right function key is, they could have completely eliminated them and used a standard QWERTY layout. I am investigating options to remap the keys, but the keycaps are wrong and from what I understand not replaceable even if fxtec came out with a sane qwerty layout.

I agree! but have a look at finqwerty that solves a lot!

P.S. I agree on a lot of your points but they don't bother me too much. But honestly without finqwerty point 1 would also be a big problem for me!

Edited December 31, 2019 by Doktor Oswaldo

[Hook 3,020]

10 hours ago, fxtec5 said:

2. Lack of verizon support. The pro1 was clearly advertised as being compatible with verizon, yet is not actually supported in verizon. I have managed to get it halfway working, but coverage is terrible and sms delivery is intermittent. "Messages" shows an error "no SMS connection" all of the time, and sometimes messages come through but now always. I am currently investigating options to migrating to a different carrier since the whole reason I wanted a keyboard phone was for messaging and I need reliable SMS capability.

12. Camera is terrible. Using the stock camera I cannot actually take pictures (after pressing shutter soft or hard button the screen blinks, but does not save a file) and the front camera is not even detected (pressing the flip button causes the screen to momentarily go blank, but then the camera resets to the rear camera). Using gcam the cameras both work, but it takes over 30 seconds to get an image (after starting gcam, the image is frozen for about 30 seconds before the camera starts to work), and the hard shutter button doesn't work. At least the front camera works so I know it is not a hardware problem. Yes I am running the most recent firmware.

 

On #2.  The phone is compatible with Verizon but that doesn't mean Verizon is going to support it and there is very little a small foreign company can do to change that.  Mine works fine where i am, probably because we have good VoLTE coverage and don't need Verizon's CDMA network, which is where the problems with Verizon arise.  Knowing Verizon well, I anticipated the problem and made a plan B (AT&T Prepaid) when I made the decision to buy the phone. I am grateful my area seems to have good VoLTE coverage, so I didn't need my Plan B after all.

 

#12 probably deserves it's own thread because this isn't happening to me or anyone else I have seen and we should explore if it is an actual defect in your phone.

No need to discuss the other points, they are reasonable observations.  However, for others deciding about the Pro 1:

I disagree with #3, 4 and 7.  I love the size and the heft of the phone, but that is personal and subjective and may reflect my large hands. For me it is perfect and rides nicely in my front left jeans pocket.  And the 835's performance is just fine.  And if it gets stuck on Android 10...<shrug> my 5 going on 6 year old Samsung Tablet is doing fine on Lineage's version of Android 7. Even gets security updates.

I'm not that much  bothered by 5, 9 11 and 13 (I am convinced 11 will happen and F(x) Tec is cooperating with them, I believe.  13 could happen-- not sure if it would come from the community, F(x) Tec or both)

Agree with the Doktor that FinQwerty solves a lot, but absolutely agree on #1. 

 

 

[netman 1,424]

12 hours ago, fxtec5 said:

Having used the phone for a weekend now, here are my grievances listed in order of severity:

Hardware issues:

1. Function keys. Who thought this was a good idea?!?! If they had just put the ?/ key where the right function key is, they could have completely eliminated them and used a standard QWERTY layout. I am investigating options to remap the keys, but the keycaps are wrong and from what I understand not replaceable even if fxtec came out with a sane qwerty layout.

2. Lack of verizon support. The pro1 was clearly advertised as being compatible with verizon, yet is not actually supported in verizon. I have managed to get it halfway working, but coverage is terrible and sms delivery is intermittent. "Messages" shows an error "no SMS connection" all of the time, and sometimes messages come through but now always. I am currently investigating options to migrating to a different carrier since the whole reason I wanted a keyboard phone was for messaging and I need reliable SMS capability.

3. Keyboard spacing - the keyboard is too long to efficiently type on. I don't exactly have small hands, but I am often overextending my thumb to get to the keys in the middle of the keyboard. I also have issues with missing keystrokes, and for whatever reason the spellchecker only catches about half of them. Hopefully I will get used to it, but missing keystrokes is a really annoying failure mode for a keyboard and kills typing efficiency. If I ignore missing keys I am up into the 40-50wpm range for unformulated text, but with even simple formatted text I am down in the 10-20wpm range due to the terrible shift layout and missing keys that seem related to my relocating my fingers going from shift/function back to the home row. It also doesn't help that there are no home row bumps on the f/j keys so when you loose your footing there is no option but to look down at your fingers.

4. Phone is gigantic. I mentioned this before, which makes not only awkward to type on (need to bend wrists to get to fgh keys) but also a beast to carry around. It is the same thickness but much larger/heaver than my droid 4 or even the priv. I really hope the pro2 comes in closer to the size of the droid 4 because if they make it any larger you may as well just get an ultraportable laptop with real keys. I appreciate that it has a larger battery, but if the screen were smaller it wouldn't be necessary to have such a large battery.

5. Curved screen. The touch region of the curved screen comes into the number key region, and I am constantly creating false touches while typing. I hope that they are going to be able to fix this in software, honestly at this point I would rather have the phone configured to have the outer few millimeters of the screen blanked off and touch disabled so they always show black and the curved edge are effectively removed from the screen. Also, the color temperature varies wildly with brightness changes, so when auto-brightness control is enabled websites color pallets drift like crazy as the room lighting changes. It is especially noticeable on off-white websites like news.ycombinator.com

6. Notification LED is way to bright. I can use it as a flashlight at night, and see it through the fabric of my pockets... I am working on a way to add some black ink over the led to tone it down to a more reasonable level.

7. Middling processor. It has a snapdragon 835 which would have been a good processor back when the kickstarter was happening, but current gen phones in this price class have literally double the processing performance. It is still an order of magnitude more responsive than the droid 4, but at the rate we are getting keyboard phones these days I would have liked to see fxtec future proof this a bit better so that it stays usable until the pro2 comes out in the mid 2030's. (sarcasm)

8. Serial number label on the back. It looks like a serious afterthought, and the ink on my label is already starting to get worn off even though I have only had the phone for a weekend. I already peeled it off--luckily the adhesive comes off nicely. Why didn't they put it on the inside of the hinge?

9. Keyboard backlight is really uneven. It is functional, but the phone looks like the keys have been worn down or something and it distracts from the overall image. In particular ' and " are basically completely dark on my device.

10. Sim tray is really scratchy. I have used other phones with the same style sim tray and they weren't nearly this bad. Honestly it feels like I am inserting the tray in upside down or something--maybe there is some kind of misalignment between the outer case and the contacts in the phone on my device? I have a single active sim which I swap between several devices as appropriate and I am worried I am going to wear out of straight up smash the sim tray after the first few swaps.

Just to throw some more opinions/experiences in the mix:
1, 3, 4. Are things i quite easily got used to, I didn't really find the phone that big even (however my phone before this was a Doogee S60 which is a monsterously big slab). And as for the keyboard layout... I like the letters being offset now that I got used to it but the lack of a / key without fn seems like a weird decision to me. Overall still the best keyboard layout I've seen on a phone.

On 2... Did they ever officially advertise it as being compatible with Verizon? I know we deduced on the forum that it *should* work, and it sorta does, but I can't recall any official statments.

5. I dislike the curved screen too but for different reasons I guess, I like the look and stuff but it seems just not the most pragmatic choice because screen protectors are more difficult and it is more fragile than a flat one. I've only had issues touching it when opening/closing the keyboard and I'm getting better at doing that without pressing the screen.

6. I completely disagree and find the LED of a fair brightness.

7, 8, 9. Fair critisisms which never crossed my own mind because I don't care about these particular aspecs. I took the label off when I got the phone, find SD835 a nice and stupid fast SoC, and the backlight is indeed uneven but works.

10. I did not feel mine as scratchy, it's a fiddle to use but so is every sim tray I've used. Haven't swapped my sim a whole lot.

Snipped out the software issues because I have no comment, except hmm camera had different issues for me, usable but it could definitely improve.

[FlyingAntero 871]

12 hours ago, netman said:

On 2... Did they ever officially advertise it as being compatible with Verizon? I know we deduced on the forum that it *should* work, and it sorta does, but I can't recall any official statments.

It was said on Twitter that Pro1 should work with Verizon and Sprint.

https://mobile.twitter.com/chenliangchen/status/1109828299461660672

Technically that might be true but Verizon has not whitelisted Pro1.

https://www.fxtec.com/networks-bands-pro1-support/

[divstar 164]

On 12/31/2019 at 6:01 AM, fxtec5 said:

1. Function keys.

2. Lack of verizon support.

3. Keyboard spacing - the keyboard is too long to efficiently type on.

4. Phone is gigantic.

5. Curved screen.

6. Notification LED is way to bright.

7. Middling processor.

8. Serial number label on the back.

9. Keyboard backlight is really uneven.

10. Sim tray is really scratchy.

11. Lack of 3rd party OS.

12. Camera is terrible.

13. Lack of a multiboot bootloader.

14. Keyboard backlight doesn't work correctly.

1. I disagree: they make writing easier. While I agree that the layout is anything but straightforward and sometimes I do not even know how to type a particular letter, most of the type it really is convienient.

2. Since I am not from the US I do not really care, but it does feel as if 4G support is not as good or stable as with my S8.

3. and 4. I prefer smaller phones in general. My all-time-favorite smartphone was the HP Veer. It was tiny, but did have an excellent keyboard. But the pro1 seems okay and while the keyboard might not be ideal, I can still type quite nicely using it (which I currently so).

5. The curved screen is indeed annoying, because itˋs useless for one and causes unnecessary problems for two. I think the phone would have been better off with a flat screen. However: this would have made the phone look and be even clunkier than it already is.

6. The only thing I noticed is that the LED blinks not as fluently as it probably should. I do not agree in regards to it being too bright.

7. Honestly: what do you use your phone for that needs more performance? I agree that a newer processor would have been better in terms of being future proof. Then again the electronics world is changing so fast, that being really future proof is next to impossible. The 835 works just fine for whatever I use my phone (music, some gaming, videos, programs such as RDP).

8. This is rather easy to solve. I have a different concern: the backside of the phone is too even so chances are high it might slip out of my hand (which is however not what actually happened to my screen - that seems to remain a mystery while even the spidered-screen stays next to fully usable).

9. I agree on that one, though it does not really bother me at all. I would have preferred if the backlighting was around the buttons so that one could easily guess the borders of each key... but it works for me either way.

10. I agree on this one, too, though it really is not important to me since one usually does not open/close the tray on a daily base.

11. I am pretty sure they are working on it and while the available builds are rather beta, they do exist already... though they are not something everyone would use. Since I need WhatsApp for various reasons, Sailfish Community Edition wonˋt cut it for me. Iˋd suggest to give it some more time.

12. Canˋt really tell as most of the time I donˋt really care for the cameras. They both work for me and take photos that I can live perfectly with.

13. As long as there is barely a 3rd party OS, I donˋt think we need a multibootloader either. Also this might change in the future.

14. I havenˋt seen this happen, but I see, that flip opening the keyboard does not always properly turn the screen to landscape mode and neither does closing always turn the screen to portrait-mode. Leaving into homescreen and opening the app from the list of recently used apps works for me though.