- The only physical keyboards I liked were the Danger Sidekick II and the Nokia 9000 both horizontal QWERTY. I was never a fan of the portrait layout of the Blackberry keyboards. I would love to see the Sidekick make a come-back provided the screen was not a touch screen or there was an easy way to disable touch. I rebooted a telco mainframe from a Nokia 9000. SYREI:rank=reload,reason="CV Updated" over telnet from the phone no less. Everyone around me stopped talking on their phone for 40 minutes.
To me the keyboards on iPhone and Android feel like they are from a different planet and made for garden gnome fingers but I did not grow up with these phones.
- I really liked the Motorola Droid family of slider keyboards, also horizontal. Made for a very handy, pocket ssh terminal.
- The delta between modern soft keyboards and phone-size physical keyboards just seems too small to make the bulk of a physical keyboard worthwhile.
If someone is really "typing long emails or editing documentation with just their phone's touch keyboard" they're probably not doing that while standing/walking, so they're probably better off getting a little stand for their phone, and a portable Bluetooth keyboard, which will be far more functional than a keyboard for thumbs.
- No, for the 5th time, they're not.
- Seriously. I recently switched to a minimal phone which has a physical keyboard. I was pretty stoked to have one again but then the space bar broke after a few weeks. The failure rendered the entire phone immediately useless just like that.
- I propose a sub section of Betteridge's law of headlines: If an article states "x is making a come back" the answer is usually no it's not.
- I've noticed the keyboards on iOS and Android are getting taller and taller with extra buttons for things like password fill with no way to disable these features. I run a word guessing game(Redactle) and there is almost no room left for the actual game which really sucks!
- If you're using gboard, you can resize the height of the keyboard
- Android allows custom keyboards. I like fleksy a lot but it hasn't been updated in ages with bugs creeping in.
- iOS kind of does as well. But it's the bar above the keyboard that grinds my gears. Of course it was added in the sloppy liquid 'ass updates. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256177528?sortBy=rank
- Have you tried Futo Keyboard? https://keyboard.futo.org/
- O notice the autocephalous is getting worse and worse every days.
- I miss the days of physical keyboards. I spend most of my time correcting mistakes on these awful screen boards.
- I had a keypad phone for less than 15$ and it was really great and portable/small.
Sadly it died one day some months ago and recently I contacted some shops to find what went wrong with the phone and it looks like the battery had some issue.
But luckily, its battery is removable so I can just buy a new one. I am gonna bring it in a few days maybe (if I get the time) but should take less than 2$
The amount of features in the phones (calling+storage/music+audio+messaging ie sms) and all others make it worth it, the only thing it doesn't have is internet/app access but I really loved the phone.
For context: It's the kaechoda k100. Its keyboard is physical but it doesn't show the buttons and looks really cool irl. The buttons only show when you click on them.
I remember one of my friends literally shout one day that I had Iphone Mini and the whole class was looking at me but it actually felt really nice phone and definitely better than my dad's old shitass redmi 1 gb phone android which was so slow.
the k100 had 32mb ram iirc. its crazy how snappy it was compared to the almost two magntitude larger 1 gb android ram phone.
Dumbphones are amazing given how cheap they are.
I think that personally a cool-looking dumb phone can/should actually-be given to kids for calling/safety-concerns without giving them the beast of phones if possible in situations but obv it depends on situation.
Although one of the things I wanted with the dumb phone was a Linux handheld.
I found this website just now https://mecha.so/comet#hardware so it would be interesting to see how the idea of linux handhelds pan out.
Dumb phone + Linux handheld seems good seperation of concern personally to me given how lightweight Dumb phones are. I have had them sometimes be lost in my pocket :)
Edit: But point be said that obviously they are very restricted for messaging purposes at times but I had optimized my typing speed for it to be like 1 word per second maybe 2 so for some basic things and even talking to some of my friends sometimes it was possible.
I was the only reason people used SMS sometimes in the world where mostly its whatsapp during my time with the dumb-phone.
- with Google's long-time push for adaptivity across candy-bar phones, foldables, tablets of varying sizes, desktops, and recently XR, I wonder how well modern apps will handle this new generation of keyboard phones :)
- I never enjoyed the Blackberry-style keyboards, but I had an HTC Desire Z with a full slideout keyboard that I absolutely loved.
- I had one of these (although in the states it was called the G2. I also had the G1) and fully agree, best phone I ever had. It was also the only Android I had that survived longer than 3 years. Regrettably, I have since switched to an iPhone.
- I took part of an exchange program to the USA in 2009.
I vividly remember buying an HTC Dream (the HTC Desire Z's predecessor), and having to some sort of hack to make it activate with a European SIM card.
Absolutely loved the tactile feel of the keyboard, and the very satisfying mechanical click that sounded when you opened up the keyboard.
- Looks nice indeed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JZNtjYZaH8
- What the hell is wrong with that site? It immediately starts playing audio and there’s no apparent way to stop it.
30 points by thunderbong 2 hours ago | 20 comments