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Experience so far with Pro1X


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Hi All,

Thought I'd post my experience so far with the Pro1X on stock firmware. Want to see if others are finding it similar, and also give people an idea of what to expect when they get theirs.

The Good

  • GPS signal
  • Stock ROM relatively clean and vanilla
  • Camera is pretty good
  • Keyboad (obviously, that's why we all got one) love having a hard keyboard again. On screen keyboard is good too
  • Screen is bright
  • Glass screen feels really nice. Very smooth and scratch resistant
  • Performace is fine, I don't push my phone very hard, but haven't had any issues
  • WiFi is fine. Some have reported issues, I seem to be OK. I do notice it switches (according to the indicator) from WiFi 5 to 6 and back again. I have version 6 at home so not sure if this is accurate or not
  • Boot times are quick
  • Build quality feels very good

The Bad

  • Battery life not great, a shame
  • Abismal mobile data connection, the phone is effectively a PDA with WiFi (hopefully will get fixed though)
  • Speakers crackal sometimes and sound stops/starts intermittently from one speaker. When it works properly through sound is not too bad
  • Phone can get a bit warm at times, maybe because of the metal chassis
  • Fingerprint reader stops working after half a day. Needs a reboot to fix

That's been my experience so far. How's everyone else finding it?

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Both wifi and cellular are unusable for me. Very poor connectivity. That's a deal-breaker. But I am hopeful the issues with be resolved.

I had issues of false triggering of the fingerprint reader when using in portrait, which refreshed pages or did other strange things. Another deal-breaker.

The rest of the good, I agree with.

The rest of the bad, I did not experience. I believe the speaker crackle is a known issue. Give the forum a search.

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Top reasons why you should NEVER buy Fxtec Pro1x (long story short, I am back at Unihertz Titan)

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  1. It looks like eye candy at first glance, but it is ergonomically AWFUL. The guys behind it have ZERO clue about how to do and test the mechanical UX, so:

    1. The fingerprint sensor is placed in the wrongest possible location: on edge in a place you grip it by accident when you just pick it up from a pocket or from a table. Supplement this with the software defaults -- 10 attempts and you are locked out forever until the system reboot.

    2. The keyboard is decent and APPEARS like it was modeled after the Nokia n950, BUT. You can open n950 or e7 (if you did not have a chance to lay your hands on a development prototype) with one smooth sliding motion. For Pro1x, you need to pry it with your nails, and don't miss what the proper side is! Srsly, Fxtec?

    3. If you accidentally activate the camera, you cannot simply close it. Before you master this procedure, you will take a few unwanted pictures just by trying to quit the camera app.

    4. The camera protrusion does not allow you to place the phone firmly on the table! I had to glue small pieces of rubber to make it possible. It would not be a problem for a regular phone, but it is a basic operation mode for a horizontal qwerty slider.

  2. Thanks for the AMOLED, kb button mechanics and Qualcomm chip (old and cheap, but still better than Mediatek), but the rest of the hardware is crap. The camera does not match even today's Chinese midrange phones. The battery life is mediocre at best, and the hinge quality is a silly imitation attempt to Nokia's swan song of qwerty sliders; it does noticeably wobble, so it feels pretty cheap, too. I could understand no 5G/WiFi6 (which I value for energy effectiveness, not the speed), but no wireless charger?

  3. Something is severely wrong with cellular connectivity in particular. It drops out of the network and loses calls and data connection for no apparent reason.

  4. It is extremely fragile and faulty. After two months, I got a crack on the screen glass, I did not drop or put mechanical pressure on it -- just from the internal tension. It was small and tolerable, but one more month later, the charging port died, and it was the end of the story for me and Fxtec (no wireless charging, remember?)

  5. The Indiegogo campaign was on the edge of a scam, all the promises were broken, the communication was full of shit, and to add insult to injury, those who did not fund were able to buy the phone up to 3x cheaper from Expansys with no prepayments and no delays. Also, my second phone (the first one I got from Expansys, of course, because I never got my perk delivered) is stuck in EU customs because Fxtec could not handle shipping and customs properly. If it ever gets released (which I doubt), I'd happily sell it to the highest bidder.

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@arkenoi Unfortunately, much your negative review is unterstandable.

That said, many people used to be and still are absolutely happy with the very similar predecessor device, and so would I, if I wouldn't have abused it too much and, in trying to repair, while repairing the issue that needed repair, damaged it further in other parts, so I moved over to the Pro1X which does have its faults. 

But there is still hope the happiness will yet come with firmware updates.

Other parts of your review seem to be just bad luck, as in case of a cracked screen without cause, this hasn't been reported from anyone else yet for either of the two devices, and a lot has been reported over time.

And yet other parts seem to stem from false expectations. A $700 low-volume slider phone will never be able to fully compete with higher-end mass-market smartphones, hardware-wise. That's simply economically impossible. 

Regarding the keyboard, I guess @EskeRahn has said all that is to say on Reddit. Your negative experience seems to stem from a combination of unwillingless to contribute to the usability of your own device by learning and getting used to something plus the false expectation that a 2022 slider smartphone was just any "consumer device" that would have to cater to all your convenience and luxury whims. It is not. It is a specialty device for those who really, really want the keyboard—and are able and willing to compromise just a bit on a couple of other accounts.  

Edited by Rob. S.
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I own both an original Pro1 and a Pro1-X, so I'm in the lucky position to be able to compare the two devices side-by-side. Part of your criticism (which I partly share) applies to both phones, but some things are also regressions introduced with the Pro1-X only.

2 hours ago, arkenoi said:

The keyboard is decent and APPEARS like it was modeled after the Nokia n950, BUT. You can open n950 or e7 (if you did not have a chance to lay your hands on a development prototype) with one smooth sliding motion. For Pro1x, you need to pry it with your nails, and don't miss what the proper side is! Srsly, Fxtec?

I agree. In three years, I never dared trying to learn to open the Pro1 single-handedly, out of fear it would jump out of my hand in the process. I could never have afforded an N950 (😉) but even my N900's simple sliding keyboard mechanism was more practical from my point of view.

2 hours ago, arkenoi said:

The camera protrusion does not allow you to place the phone firmly on the table! I had to glue small pieces of rubber to make it possible. It would not be a problem for a regular phone, but it is a basic operation mode for a horizontal qwerty slider.

I fully agree that this is a really annoying downgrade from the Pro1. The latter actually had a sunken-in camera window, precisely to protect it when the phone is placed on a table.

2 hours ago, arkenoi said:

Thanks for the AMOLED, kb button mechanics and Qualcomm chip (old and cheap, but still better than Mediatek), but the rest of the hardware is crap. The camera does not match even today's Chinese midrange phones. The battery life is mediocre at best, and the hinge quality is a silly imitation attempt to Nokia's swan song of qwerty sliders; it does noticeably wobble, so it feels pretty cheap, too.

I agree with @Rob. S. that it might be unfair to generally expect quality and performance on par with big players from a small-volume manufacturer. That said, I do not feel that the hinge mechanisms feel cheap or wobbly, even with my three-year-old Pro1. Then again, I actually use the hw keyboard much less than I initially expected. Others might wear it down much faster ...  

I too was never happy with the Pro1's camera, neither with regard to optical quality, nor to firmware behaviour (autofocus). With the right third-party software (OpenCamera) it becomes acceptable at best. The Pro1-X was in fact expected to have a better camera sensor, but I must admit I have not played much with it yet, mainly because of this last point:

2 hours ago, arkenoi said:

Something is severely wrong with cellular connectivity in particular. It drops out of the network and loses calls and data connection for no apparent reason.

This is absolutely an issue of the Pro1-X only! With both devices placed side-by-side, the Pro1-X's mobile connectivity is abysmal compared to the Pro1's,  to the point where using the X as a phone is not practically possible for me. This is a much discussed issue with the device, and there is some hope that this will be improved with future firmware updates. I'm not holding my breath, though.

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5 minutes ago, Rob. S. said:

It is not. It is a specialty device for those who really, really want the keyboard—and are able and willing to compromise just a bit on a couple of other accounts.  

I think the "just a bit", is a bit of an understatement, but else completely agree.

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On 3/17/2023 at 9:15 AM, arkenoi said:

The keyboard is decent and APPEARS like it was modeled after the Nokia n950, BUT. You can open n950 or e7 (if you did not have a chance to lay your hands on a development prototype) with one smooth sliding motion. For Pro1x, you need to pry it with your nails, and don't miss what the proper side is! Srsly, Fxtec?

I agree. In three years, I never dared trying to learn to open the Pro1 single-handedly, out of fear it would jump out of my hand in the process. I could never have afforded an N950 (😉) but even my N900's simple sliding keyboard mechanism was more practical from my point of view.

 

How are you guys opening your phones? Aside from Day 1 I have never had a problem...
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cMvjas963yyQAj619

 

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On 3/22/2023 at 3:40 PM, Hook said:
On 3/22/2023 at 3:26 PM, sequestris said:

How are you guys opening your phones? Aside from Day 1 I have never had a problem...
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cMvjas963yyQAj619

I agree.

 

So do I 😉

 

On 2/20/2021 at 1:31 PM, Rob. S. said:

OK, and now I also see why it's been given the epithet "the Clack"...

 

 

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