Now that Fxtec is dead, let's do an autopsy

[lg05lg 1]

Fxtec is dead. The phones are listed as out of stock. The website hasn't been updated in months. The company has stopped engaging on any channel/platform. Liangchen Chen lists himself on LinkedIn as CTO of Clicks. Let's do an autopsy.

I have been following Fxtec since they tried to build a Moto Mod with a keyboard under a different name. I watched the Pro1 and Pro1 X launches closely, though I did not sink money into them because I was one of the last BlackBerry holdouts. Here is an overview of what happened from my understanding:

Fxtec was launched under the name Livermorium and sought to make a keyboard to attach to Motorola smartphones through their Moto Mod program. They announced it at CES 2018 to lots of friendly press coverage. At some point, Motorola axed the Moto Mod program, so Fxtec evidently pivoted to building their own smartphone.

They began cobbling together the Pro1 with a mix of off-the-shelf parts and a custom keyboard. Against the odds, they did manage to manufacture and ship a functional slider QWERTY phone in 2019 to positive, though lukewarm, reviews. 

The following year, they announced the Pro1 X in partnership with XDA. This was marketed as a techie or power user's dream, with a choice between multiple OSes and a Snapdragon 835. They appeared to be a real company, not vaporware, especially now that they were releasing a second product. They raised $1.5 million on Indiegogo. They seemed to be here to stay. It all went downhill from there.

Their order of Snapdragon 835s fell through and they pivoted to the 662 and began announcing delays. In 2021 they started openly telling people that they were redesigning parts of the phone from scratch. They promised and promised and promised the devices would ship soon. Manufacturing began in the summer of 2022 and Expansys was contracted for fulfillment.

Then it all fell apart. Something went terribly wrong with Expansys, who apparently began selling the phones themselves because Fxtec broke some contract. Backers who had been waiting years at this point were seeing non-backers get the phone well before them. Shipments trickled throughout 2023 but the damage was done. The final communication from Fxtec was in October 2023 with orders still outstanding. 

In 2024, Clicks was announced at CNET with Fxtec credited and Liangchen Chen as its CTO. 

What can we say about this company?

First, they deserve credit for designing a functional phone and shipping thousands of them to consumers. Many other companies have tried ambitious projects and folded before releasing anything (I'm thinking of Onward Mobility in particular...). Fxtec actually did it.

But that's where the credit ends. This has to be one of the most unethical companies I have ever seen. They have strung backers along for nearly four years now and kept their money hostage, slow-walking or even refusing refunds. They don't appear to be honoring any warranty claims. They have gone dark on their customers.

Fxtec can blame their manufacturer(s) and warehouses all they want, but China is the most unethical business climate on the planet and when you do business there, you're bound to be screwed. They can claim they had no choice but to build in China, but when things went south, they should have been the ones holding the bag, not the customers who trusted them with a small fortune. Liangchen does not appear to care one iota about decency, good business practices, or his own reputation.

I expect one day this website will be nothing but a 404 error with zero explanation from Liangchen or anyone else about the fate of the company or its outstanding orders.

[FlyingAntero 871]

1 hour ago, lg05lg said:

First, they deserve credit for designing a functional phone and shipping thousands of them to consumers. Many other companies have tried ambitious projects and folded before releasing anything (I'm thinking of Onward Mobility in particular...). Fxtec actually did it.

But that's where the credit ends. This has to be one of the most unethical companies I have ever seen. They have strung backers along for nearly four years now and kept their money hostage, slow-walking or even refusing refunds. They don't appear to be honoring any warranty claims. They have gone dark on their customers.

I agree some of your comments but not all. In my opinion, F(x)tec tried hard but failed in the end. Some devices were shipped (like mine, both Pro1 and Pro1-X) but many people will probably never receive their phone. However, it is good to point out that Indiegogo backers are different thing than "real" orders from F(x)tec site. I don't know how many ordered the phone via F(x)tec website and never received the phone. Most likely quite many and that sucks. But if you were a backer via Indiegogo then the risk was always there.

I can speak only on my behalf but I have claimed one warranty case successfully and ordered spare parts for Pro1 from F(x)tec. Everything that I have paid, I have also received. Maybe I am really lucky but I have also actively done some actions. When it started to seem that things will collapse I changed my Scandic layout to normal QWERTY and asked phone with stock Android instead of Lineage OS. I think that if I wouldn't do that, I could still be waiting the device.

But in the end, in my opinion F(x)tex really tried but they kept going too long after they faced too many difficulties. The situation would still be the same (many device not shipped) but they should have said that the end is here months ago. Maybe they have not said that so that they can still be operating and provide spare parts if someone asks. To my understanding they are still selling spare parts.

Edited April 15 by FlyingAntero

[Hook 3,043]

I have to agree with @FlyingAntero. My experience has been similar (Pro 1, Pro1x,2 warranty repairs).  I think a lot of mistakes were made on top of an almost unbelievable chain of bad luck, and they probably should have just called it quits long ago.  But their only real fault is that they have relentlessly tried to keep going (probably pouring in more of their own money than the original IGG investment). 

[pistikem 85]

i started using keyboard phones many years ago, the Nokia N900 for over 10y actually, then it died on me, just when the Fxtec Pro1 surfaced at the right time.  i am still happily using the Pro1 daily as a phone and camera, and then for WireGuard with TERMUX under the original Android 9 OS, so that Apps such as Leica's FOTOS or SONOS continue to run.  over its lifetime i had to replace twice its touchscreen and something else i don't recall now - and i guess i was lucky that i received all those parts and the phone itself always in reasonable time and also had the necessary supportive email communcation with the company.  i am truly sad for them, what a bad luck, bad timing.  let's hope my Pro1continues to live for a few more years though the last nail on its coffin will be the usual end of life time issue with Android and Apps running on it...

[Rob. S. 1,664]

9 hours ago, lg05lg said:

What can we say about this company?

I agree to much of what you say, it's a mostly correct summary of what has happened.

In terms of obstacles, the pandemic and the following major supply chain breakdown could have been added.

But when it comes to the morals of the company - sorry, there is no morality in a market economy. Of course I would like to get either the overdue phone or my money back. As it is, It is a miracle that they still exist, even if what still exists is very little. The alternative in the shape of a more ethical behaviour towards individual customers, the alternative to the status quo, meaning a few devices may, perhaps, still be shipped, would have been a much earlier demise of the company, with the guarantee of customers not going to see anything, neither phone, nor money. So this is, in the big picture, not even that unethical at all.

 

Edited April 15 by Rob. S.

[jakfish 133]

Usually, foreigners vying in someone else's backyard is a playbook for difficulty. Certainly, Planet Computer would agree. Mr. Chen may be native Chinese, I don't know, but the company is based in England, just like Planet, and all that back-and-forth to another country is expensive and can result in industrial obfuscation (I often wondered if anyone at Planet spoke Chinese).

Planet also failed because they changed their form factor with every iteration, so the phone was always beta. At least, fxtec tried to improve their original model rather than constantly reinventing the wheel.

[claude0001 1,352]

11 hours ago, lg05lg said:

Let's do an autopsy.

Overall I think this is a quite good analysis. That they managed to grow the (SD835) Pro1 from the ash of the Livermorium project almost seems like a miracle from today's perspective.

The original Pro1 was indeed far from perfect. It had its QA issues, and also some design flaws. But overall, as you can tell from the numbers of Pro1s vs. Pro1-Xs offered on the aftermarket, those who have one tend to cling to their Pro1 to this date. It will remain the best (last?) keyboard slider for some time to come. Despite owning also a Pro1-X (admittedly through Expansis' grey-marketing 😳), I recently purchased a second, pre-owned Pro1 for parts. This way, I was able to fix my dying keyboard and battery, and will hopefully be able to run on SD835-Pro1 for a few years longer ...

11 hours ago, lg05lg said:

The following year, they announced the Pro1 X in partnership with XDA. This was marketed as a techie or power user's dream, with a choice between multiple OSes and a Snapdragon 835. They appeared to be a real company, not vaporware, especially now that they were releasing a second product. They raised $1.5 million on Indiegogo. They seemed to be here to stay. It all went downhill from there.

I appreciate how you highlight that the Pro1-X IGG project was actually meant to be about software development, rather than hardware upgrades, for the original Pro1. Granted, you could choose more storage and RAM. But those were trivial hardware changes. The money raised through IGG was initially meant to be invested into alternative OS development (UBTouch, LineageOS) for an already-existing phone. Think of the cool stuff they could have done with all that money, if they hadn't had to burn it all in rushed development of a successor hardware ...

I have written before that they should, in fact, have pulled the plug on the Pro1-X project when it turned out that they could no longer get the SD835. Trying to do hardware AND software development of a phone, with a budget that had originally been planned for software development only, was just ... optimistic. Besides the mentioned "contractual issues" related to actually shipping the Pro1-X, its -- this time very apparent -- QA and design issues are the reason why it has become such a trainwreck. They are also the reason why you can get a Pro1-X on Ebay with relative ease, as opposed to a Pro1.

11 hours ago, lg05lg said:

This has to be one of the most unethical companies I have ever seen.

While most of their acting after the SD662 downgrade has been questionable, I think this wording is really too harsh. I think they got under the wheels and are trying to survive. IGG backers tend to forget that their contributions are meant specifically to cover the risk of failure of a project.  And, yes, I do know that some pending regular Pro1 orders were converted to Pro1-X. For that, see my point above about allowing the IGG project to fail ...

Edited April 15 by claude0001

[VaZso 1,998]

21 hours ago, claude0001 said:

The original Pro1 was indeed far from perfect. It had its QA issues, and also some design flaws.

Right, some of them had more or less keyboard rattling issues which is a QA issue.

About design flaws, one of them was the interchanged wiring of its speakers which was "corrected" in kernel but it has also resulted handsfree problems (system use the original what results to be the opposite speaker for handsfree mode), also it aggressively applies noise reduction every time the microphone is in use, so it is impossible to record videos with correct sound.
This flaw could be corrected if they had the actual source of Pro1-related kernel code but apparently not even F(x)tec had it and their original partner is not in picture anymore.

It had more or less problems with WiFi communication (signal quality) and also some issues of lower coverage of more or less GSM bands (maybe also partly because of potential antenna contact problems).

Maybe also there is an issue around display fixing which causes touch panel problems sooner or later.
(Display is only glued at very narrow sides and internal contact issues happen.)

However, it is still a very good KEYBOARD phone.

As of Pro1X, that would had been also a great phone if they would not need to build it on a hurry.
I think they have skipped some hardware iterations which resulted a lot of radio issues which most likely are unable to get corrected in software (however I don't know what they have tried to correct it and if there will be any chance for trying it later).
The assembly is very good but the main board is new and was not thoroughly tested before launch.

Quote

The money raised through IGG was initially meant to be invested into alternative OS development

Right, and maybe it was partly aimed to be their profit of Pro1 and maybe also for preparing a successor...
So the forced redesign of Pro1 ate a lot of their money unexpectedly.

 

[claude0001 1,352]

2 hours ago, VaZso said:

Right, some of them had more or less keyboard rattling issues which is a QA issue.

About design flaws, one of them was the interchanged wiring of its speakers which was "corrected" in kernel but it has also resulted handsfree problems (system use the original what results to be the opposite speaker for handsfree mode), also it aggressively applies noise reduction every time the microphone is in use, so it is impossible to record videos with correct sound.
This flaw could be corrected if they had the actual source of Pro1-related kernel code but apparently not even F(x)tec had it and their original partner is not in picture anymore.

It had more or less problems with WiFi communication (signal quality) and also some issues of lower coverage of more or less GSM bands (maybe also partly because of potential antenna contact problems).

Now that I own two Pro1s, I feel like I'm in a better position to judge whether some problems are by design, in software, or just due to missing QA. Examples:

• Keyboard:  The one of my original Pro1 was slowly starting to fail, with some keys being detected only on the second or third press. Some loyal F(x)tec advocates got close to get me believe the keyboard issues were induced by my self-built Lineage-16 ROM. Guess what: After migrating my identical setup to the other (similarly old) hardware things just work again. -> QA all along!
• Camera: After moving to that newly-purchased Pro1, I noticed it was bitten by the dreaded camera-cannot-focus-to-infinity bug. Also that problem has been previously associated to "unofficial" OSes like my LineageOS. Guess what: I swapped the camera modules between both phones and the problem went away. With no change in software needed! Seriously, dudes, it's just been broken camera modules all along -> QA!
• Green OLED tint at low brightness: On my first Pro1, I couldn't watch movies with dark scenes because the screen's pixels would turn green at low brightness. People here almost had me believe that it was a problem of my ancient Lineage 16.0 system, and that this had been fixed in later LOS releases. I call this bullshit! After swapping-in the screen from my newly-purchased Pro1, colours are fine at any brightness, without any change to my ROM. -> QA! 

Do not get me wrong: I like my Pro1's. But some things ought to be gotten straight.

Edited April 16 by claude0001

[VaZso 1,998]

21 hours ago, claude0001 said:

Keyboard:  The one of my original Pro1 was slowly starting to fail, with some keys being detected only on the second or third press.

My Pro1 has also started doing this - not too bad but problem exists.
However, if I remember well, later keyboard driver has tried to address this issue to reduce the effect what comes to this result.

It is because of reduced connection quality at buttons which causes different bouncing just like how older mechanical rotary encoders develops the same problem what can be addressed in hardware using  a small capacitor and also in software tricks - these are mostly used together, none of them are perfect without the other.

Pro1's keyboard hardware is as simple as possible, there are no filtering capacitors at all...

So viewing from this perspective, that is not simply a QA issue, also not really a hardware issue but practically a design decision.

21 hours ago, claude0001 said:

Camera: After moving to that newly-purchased Pro1, I noticed it was bitten by the dreaded camera-cannot-focus-to-infinity bug.

There is also a camera not evenly focused bug which is also not software-related and usually not really QA-related but a result of a mechanical impact.
Maybe the roots of these problems are the same, so the cause of both problems may be related to logistics or everyday use.

22 hours ago, claude0001 said:

Green OLED tint at low brightness: On my first Pro1, I couldn't watch movies with dark scenes because the screen's pixels would turn green at low brightness.

I think that is related to screen manufacturer anyway.

My first display had this green-tint issue very badly.
I have replaced my screen several times and green-tint issue has improved and my current screen does not seem to have any green-tint (or similar) issues at all.

Anyway, red, green and blue LEDs have different forward voltages and they need to be driven by different currents in order to produce the same brightnesses.
They may also have a different current<-->brightness curve. This may be compensated in hardware (so in the display itself) and as a workaround, maybe in software.

Also, red, green and blue LEDs may getting older differently which can result in color shift because of the very same difference.

So that problem is generally not simple and as I got very different screens between very green and perfect, so I would think this is a screen quality issue.
However, I don't know who does brightness control in this system and in which way.
If display panel itself controls the brightness, then it should has some compensation for LED differences (as it should know the exact parameters of the specific display what may be programmed in factory).
If the phone directly controls the current somehow then it is up to its software to compensate

That is not really a good thing if display has an own control but needs external compensation (as workaround) to work perfectly as slight differences between OLED displays will definitively exists and should be handled somewhere for perfect screen image.

[claude0001 1,352]

25 minutes ago, VaZso said:

However, if I remember well, later keyboard driver has tried to address this issue to reduce the effect what comes to this result.

Later keyboard driver patches in Lineage suppressed unwanted multiple strokes that may originate from the hardware problems you describe. I backported those fixes to my ROM and they work. They do nothing with respect to some keys NOT reacting to a press sometimes, though.

25 minutes ago, VaZso said:

So that problem is generally not simple and as I got very different screens between very green and perfect, so I would think this is a screen quality issue.

All the technical information you provide is certainly interesting. But, from a customer perspective, I would have expected miscalibrated screens to just be sorted out during assembly of the phone. This obviously wasn't done.

Edited April 17 by claude0001

[VaZso 1,998]

58 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

But, from a customer perspective, I would have expected miscalibrated screens to just be sorted out during assembly of the phone. This obviously wasn't done.

As far as I remember well, there were a lot of complains also the very beginning of Pro1 release about green tint issues while some of the users are hardly noticed the issue.
Maybe that was the case also with pre-production devices used for main development.

Anyway, I had one but only one screen which had blueish tint issue.

What I think (but I am unsure because the way of brightness control is unknown for me) is the display has a very large deviation what would mean it should has been replaced by another manufacturer, but late in time if it would mean a redesign then it would mean money burning.

1 hour ago, claude0001 said:

They do nothing with respect to some keys NOT reacting to a press sometimes, though.

Right, but the root of the issue is the same.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

On 4/15/2024 at 11:40 AM, lg05lg said:

Their order of Snapdragon 835s fell through

That is a very mild wording. They got swindled.
They paid and the company neither delivered the chips nor their money back. And as this was the company that had most of the blueprints of the Pro1, it meant that FxTec had to start over.

They could have just folded after that, and said that our money was lost, but idealists as they are, they tried to recreate a new phone in the same form factor from the money left. Actually they deserve praise for attempting that.

For the Pro1, Chen was very often in China to get things going as planned, as "remote" does not work well with China,

Then came Covid and all went south as they could not visit and oversee things. That was another point where they could have folded and said our money were lost.
But they super optimistically fought on.

It all ended in lack of funding so they could not even send those they still got.

And yes there are stuff that does not match IGG guidelines, like transferring Pro1 orders to Pro1X, and Expensys getting a batch, both before all backers pledges was served.
You can choose to see that as "unethical" if you like, but the alternative was not that we would get neither phones nor refunds, the alternative was/is a fold, and all lost.

Also remember that IF they end up folding, any warranty claim or possible service are completely gone...

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

5 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

That is a very mild wording. They got swindled.
They paid and the company neither delivered the chips nor their money back. And as this was the company that had most of the blueprints of the Pro1, it meant that FxTec had to start over.

They could have just folded after that, and said that our money was lost, but idealists as they are, they tried to recreate a new phone in the same form factor from the money left. Actually they deserve praise for attempting that. For the Pro1, Chen was very often in China to get things going as planned, as "remote" does not work well with China,

Then came Covid and all went south as they could not visit and oversee things. That was another point where they could have folded and said our money were lost.
But the super optimistically fought on.

It all ended in lack of funding so they could not even send those they still got.

And yes there are stuff that does not match IGG guidelines, like transferring Pro1 orders to Pro1X, and Expensys getting a batch, both before all backers pledges was served.
You can choose to see that as "unethical" if you like, but the alternative was not that we would get neither phones nor refunds, the alternative was/is a fold, and all lost.

Also remember that IF they end up folding, any warranty claim or possible service are completely gone...

I completely agree. The communication thought .... 
What I mean is, it feels strange, that they just founded the next keyboard phone company (the apple thing).
I do know, that this has reasons, but the feeling is bad. An open explanation would help.

However, I don't hold any grudge with everything regarding the pro1x. It was an IGG... money spent on IGG is paid for a dream, it is pure luck if it comes true.

[claude0001 1,352]

1 hour ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

What I mean is, it feels strange, that they just founded the next keyboard phone company (the apple thing).
I do know, that this has reasons, but the feeling is bad. An open explanation would help.

In a sense, they return to their roots by making a keyboard accessory for a phone. In the light of the not-all-that-positive experience they've made as a full phone manufacturer, this must seem like the reasonable move for them to do.

One of the things that the Pro1//Pro1X story has shown is that OS development and -- more importantly -- continued maintenance of that OS seems to be nearly impossible for a small-volume company. In that view it makes sense that they now restrict themselves to addon keyboards again. Also, targeting the iPhones makes a lot of sense (even though I am no Apple fan at all): As those exist only in a small number of form-factors, it is much easier to address a large potential user base than in the Android world, where devices exist in myriads of different shapes.

The other thing I believe the Pro1 story has shown is that the time of the landscape slider phone is over. Users as well as software developers now expect the phone to be held in portrait orientation, full stop. Yes, the Pro1/X keyboard shines when using the phone for remote desktop access to some real computer, or when tinkering with our GNU/Linux installs in Termux et al.. But let's agree that those are pretty niche use cases. For regular phone use I hardly ever flip-out the hardware keyboard of my Pro1. The simple reason is that Apps assume portrait orientation, and therefore spread-out graphical information vertically on the screen. When forced into landscape, this leads to terribly inefficient use of the screen area. In result, the benefit of not having to use a software keyboard is essentially lost in most cases, at least when it comes to screen real estate. This was different in the times of the Nokia N900 or even earlier communicators, which had software optimised for landscape. With today's Android or iOS, we live in a different world, where a portrait addon-keyboard is certain to recieve wider acclaim.

On the non-technical side, of course, you are right that some (final) public statement about the status of the Pro1/X project would be nice ...    

Edited April 18 by claude0001

[VaZso 1,998]

25 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

One of the things that the Pro1//Pro1X story has shown is that OS development and -- more importantly -- continued maintenance of that OS seems to be nearly impossible for a small-volume company.

Right, especially if OS manufacturer wants to make it more complicated and wants to earn money on this area.

27 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

it is much easier to address a large potential user base than in the Android world, where devices exist in myriads of different shapes.

Right, that makes developing an accessory much easier.
However, although I hate Android, I will never buy an iPhone to have an even more restricted environment.

1 hour ago, claude0001 said:

The other thing I believe the Pro1 story has shown is that the time of the landscape slider phone is over.

Maybe... it was a special area even when Moto Mod has appeared and still there is demand but very small compared to the phone market.
However, there are tablets which may also have lower demand today, but current hype of foldable phones also contain a not always portrait use scenario.
 

[EskeRahn 5,471]

1 hour ago, claude0001 said:

The other thing I believe the Pro1 story has shown is that the time of the landscape slider phone is over. Users as well as software developers now expect the phone to be held in portrait orientation, full stop. Yes, the Pro1/X keyboard shines when using the phone for remote desktop access to some real computer, or when tinkering with our GNU/Linux installs in Termux et al.. But let's agree that those are pretty niche use cases. For regular phone use I hardly ever flip-out the hardware keyboard of my Pro1. The simple reason is that Apps assume portrait orientation, and therefore spread-out graphical information vertically on the screen. When forced into landscape, this leads to terribly inefficient use of the screen area. In result, the benefit of not having to use a software keyboard is essentially lost in most cases, at least when it comes to screen real estate. This was different in the times of the Nokia N900 or even earlier communicators, which had software optimised for landscape. With today's Android or iOS, we live in a different world, where a portrait addon-keyboard is certain to recieve wider acclaim.

My Primary use of a phone is SMS, and the secondary email, and the third web-browsing. All of which benefits from a keyboard in the right direction.

But I certainly agree that many many app-developers are too sloppy (or too incompetent?) to bother about landscape. And this even goes for the most basic stuff from Google like Settings or their Android Market app.

But until my eyes move to be in parallel with my spine, I'll prefer landscape....

[Hook 3,043]

1 hour ago, claude0001 said:

The simple reason is that Apps assume portrait orientation, and therefore spread-out graphical information vertically on the screen. When forced into landscape, this leads to terribly inefficient use of the screen area. In result, the benefit of not having to use a software keyboard is essentially lost in most cases, at least when it comes to screen real estate.

Edit: I started this before Eske's post, got interrupted, but will post anyway.  :D

Strangely, this is not my experience. It may be what I do on my Pro and Pro1x.  Mostly I work with text-- writing and editing,  I browse the web  (research while writing, a lot of forums, and such), do email, notes of various sorts for writing, and calendaring, scheduling. Keeping my display size at the smallest setting (font size one click bigger), which my 71 year old eyes have not trouble with, I find almost no app that doesn't do well in Landscape.  I have a third party app to force a fixed rotation.  I force landscape on FB Messenger (which Mrs, Hook insists on using) and I force Portrait rotation with the keyboard out on my ebook reader so I can use the extended keyboard as a grip while I read in portrait.  Quite wonderful for reading.  But everything else is fine, even with some extra scrolling for the settings menu.  But, yes, I'm not a typical user.  I'm also diverged.  I have a portrait Moto slab which is my phone phone, my car phone, and the phone for the commercial apps I mostly use out in the world (Baking, Starbucks, Roadside assistance, etc) and, therefore, don't interact with often.  And, I'm retired and an introvert.  Yeah,  no one is going to make a fortune accommodating me.

But I think there is another aspect to the unfortunate failure of landscape keyboard phones since Nokia in general, and F(x)Tec specifically.  It's not just that F(x)Tec was a small company.  This was really a DIY phone where they keyboard was brilliantly designed (even if it didn't get everything right for everybody), but the phone was basically just assembled from whatever was available off the shelf and they could afford.  Everything was what they could afford, including manufacturing and software, and all without any clout, which is needed for any kind of quality control. The fact that the Pro1 (and in my case, the Pro1x which I now use as my daily driver over my Pro1) had the quality they had, flaws and all, under such circumstances, is amazing.

If there are no real personal computers and Steve and Woz build one in a garage, it doesn't matter if it's niche... it is in a position to create the market.  But if you build a niche prototype in an already established market, you better have a large company take an interest in the phone so they can absorb the low profit of a niche market.  Which is why the iPhone keyboard is such a good idea.  There might be enough iPhone users who want a Keyboard because even 5% of a large market share is enough. If Samsung decided a landscape keyboard would be a nice addition to their line, we would finally have a decent Landscape keyboard phone with good quality control, though we'd have a much rougher time unlocking the bootloader and having the freedom to put other OSs on it. I suspect the main reason it doesn't happen is not that Samsung would worry about low margin profit (and I bet it would do really well in the Korean and Japanese markets), but because a sliding keyboard adds a lot of potential support issues.

So, yes, probably the horizontal keyboard slider is dead for now. I'm sad, because I only do things I don't like on a phone in portrait orientation.  My keyboard in my Pro1x is always out except when I put it in my pocket.  But thank you to F(x)Tec for a valiant attempt to bring it back and to give me a keyboard big enough to use.  I don't agree with your tendency to only communicate when you think you have something positive to say, but I appreciate all you have tried to do and for the phones I actually am getting to use and will try and maintain as long as I can into the future.

[Rob. S. 1,664]

2 hours ago, VaZso said:

3 hours ago, claude0001 said:

The other thing I believe the Pro1 story has shown is that the time of the landscape slider phone is over.

Maybe... it was a special area even when Moto Mod has appeared and still there is demand but very small compared to the phone market.
However, there are tablets which may also have lower demand today, but current hype of foldable phones also contain a not always portrait use scenario.

In my first few days with the Honor Magic V2 foldable I've got a hint of an impression that this new phone type may have become a new incentive for app developers to care more for non-portrait orientation use of their apps, even if it's just square-ish, which could, best case, also help landscape orientation use with slider phones...

Edited April 18 by Rob. S.

[claude0001 1,352]

4 hours ago, VaZso said:

current hype of foldable phones also contain a not always portrait use scenario.

2 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

In my first few days with the Honor Magic V2 foldable I've got a hint of an impression that this new phone type may have become a new incentive for app developers to care more for non-portrait orientation

Good point guys, that I hadn't thought of. Of course these foldables are still quite uncommon. But if prices drop at some point ... maybe this is the closest to a pocket computer we will have ...

Edited April 18 by claude0001

[claude0001 1,352]

6 hours ago, claude0001 said:

The simple reason is that Apps assume portrait orientation, and therefore spread-out graphical information vertically on the screen. When forced into landscape, this leads to terribly inefficient use of the screen area.

Even though I think we actually all agree, let me illustrate my point.

This is NewPipe, actually a very nice FLOSS YouTube client (available on F-Droid) :

Beautiful, isn't it? Now, let's flip out the Pro1's hardware keyboard, forcing the app into landscape, and look at this tragedy:

Literally one third of the screen is occupied by ... a rectangular red bar?! The amount of information displayed on screen is less than 40% of what you see in portrait mode. When browsing through content, you can't do long, efficient strokes with your finger, but have to perform many small swipes for the same overall scrolling travel. And I am already using a smaller-than-default font size!

The reason is that the App just stupidly scales everything according to the number of pixels available along the horizontal direction, still stacking all its information vertically, without trying to make intelligent use of the different aspect ratio. Too many apps behave like this, and are therefore just no fun to use with the Pro1's keyboard flipped-out.

Please do not get me wrong. I love the Pro1, and, as mentioned, I do have use cases where the horizontal slider really shines. But, I think, 99% of today's users are better served with a portrait keyboard.

Edited April 18 by claude0001

[Hook 3,043]

I'm not disagreeing with your main point.  You are right. But for someone who doesn't like using their phone in portrait and abhors touch-screen keyboards, there are work-arounds that, if you don't mind a little more scrolling (I don't-- that's one of the trade-offs I'm willing to make) make it not so bad.  Here is what Newpipe (I had to download it) looks like with my display settings on my Pro1x:

And it gets better if I actually just search...

 

And while I don't want to show you my calendar, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to see an entire month on screen and be able to read all the appointments and times. So I'm happy with the ways I can tweak things to make landscape usable.,, the big thing being there is no on-screen keyboard. That is worth everything to me. 

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Well I do agree on personal level, I love the keyboard format, and used it all the time.
I do not think the Time of keyboard phones is over, I do think the time of customer choice is over.

The game changing change apple showed with the first iPhone was not a technical aspect of the phone, it was the marketing.
Apple showed, that it is more efficient, to advert the same phone to all the people, than to build the right phone for different people.

A development we all know from supermarkets and cars. The illusion of choice. They give you different products, but they are mostly the same with different prices and branding. Often coming from the same machine.
That is the reason, one big company holds a zillion brands.

It has the same result for keyboard phones, but it is even worse.

[foxfreejack 60]

One other thing that complicates manufacturing of a physical keyboard phone: Maintaining different layouts, QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, etc.

Even juggernauts like Samsung don't want this level of complexity, because not enough people want PKB in the first place. *Sigh*

Edited April 19 by foxfreejack

[guss 13]

On 4/19/2024 at 6:22 PM, foxfreejack said:

One other thing that complicates manufacturing of a physical keyboard phone: Maintaining different layouts, QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, etc.

Even juggernauts like Samsung don't want this level of complexity, because not enough people want PKB in the first place. *Sigh*

For sure, that wouls be too expensive to respond to the needs of clients, that is more profitable to massively sell an expensive basic device that doesn't realy corespond to users needs ...

 

For summary, I think what killed FX tech is the sum of:

Young company + Brexit + Covid + production stop of processors + explosion of the costs of shipments