Midnight Pub

chasing that elusive N900 successor

~tetris

The PinePhone Pro is back in stock, and I'm tempted to get excited about Linux smartphones again.

The Nokia N900 was the pinnacle in smartphone Linux, not because it was an open source operating system (it wasn't), and not because it spawned off so many mobile open source operating systems independent from $oogle, but purely because it had a fantastic keyboard.

That keyboard would slide out smoothly from the back of the phone, click into position, and though it looked ultra-compact, you could hammer out entire essays on that tiny thing using just your thumbs without needing to look at the screen. Hell, towards the end I was even using the *edges of my thumbs* to reach specific letters it was that smooth of an experience.

The First Successor

When Nokia got "Elop'd" by micro$oft, a few of the original devs who had ported a lot of Linux codebase into ARM (at the time I think not many libraries would build for arm cpus) forked off and started their own company, Jolla.

Jolla released their Sailfish phone, which was for the most part open source barring the UI which was (weirdly?) closed. This phone was sadly aimed at a general audience, so a hardware keyboard was not built with it, however there was a hobby project of one guy who had a magnetic click-on extension for a 3D printed keyboard.

It was kludgy, the keys were super sticky and there was none of that fluidity that the N900 keyboard had. I eventually shelved the phone, despite it being a pretty good phone, and went with an old android (LineageOS) phone as my daily driver.

The Second Successor

The PinePhone was released, but the specs were so underwhelming that I saw no need to switch over to it from my current android.

The PinePhone Pro was then released, and the hardware looked decent. My ears pricked up. The RAM was a bit lower than I'd hoped (my current phone has 6 GB) but maybe that wasn't such a problem, since only android phones have this tendency to pre-allocate large amounts of compressible ram (zram) even when the phone is idle.

The cherry on top is that the PinePhone devs were aware of the reputation of N900 keyboard and 2 years ago were genuinely thinking of making one for the PinePhone that would follow a similar form. Sadly, they changed their minds, and instead implemented a larger keyboard that one can most likely sit on a desk to type with, instead of typing from your hands.

This is the closest that I'm going to get to a true successor of the N900 I think, and maybe I should just swallow my expectations and try the phone, and hopefully the merits of the phone itself (multiple OS's on decent pocket hardware) outweighs the one feature that I feel is still missing.

Write a reply

Replies

~contrarian wrote (thread):

I always wanted a developer's N950 back in the day. Are the offerings from Fxtec and Planet Computers not good enough for you today?

~inquiry wrote (thread):

I use my phone (ancient Motorola G5s (I think) associated with "Republic Wireless"), oh, prolly something like 99% to play "spider solitaire"....

Semi funny - and almost related - story:

Just a couple nights ago I started running a minimalism fever, leading to deleting apps off the phone right and left, and unbeknowst to me managed to delete whatever was providing the phone's keyboard... didn't realize it until the next morning at work, leading to degrees of hysteria to figure out what of many keyboard providing/related apps may have delivered whatever the OS, because for a while there the only way I could enter text on the fucker was via whatever Google app provides voice to text... and thankfully it's possible to install play store apps from browser tabs, because I couldn't use the play store app at all anymore without a keyboard... ay yi yi....

It actually felt like cruel "reaping what a dumbass sows" punishment. Without it, any app/field needing text input led to some kind of transparent screen overlay showing just the word 'Penti'. :-)

I apparently needed some "penti chorded" keyboard, but installing the one app with that in its name didn't do the trick (even after reboot)... so I left that installed, fucked with some Microsoft "Swiftkey" app.. and I think one more.. and suddenly things were back to how they were.

But, you know... I'm just so fucking tired of being pseudo-chained to such a device. I've been a typist since high school (graduated - brace yourselves - 1979), so to me even an improvement over hunt/peck like "swyping" feels rather "happy horseshit" - and, yes, that *does* imply I detest text messaging. Not a fan of voice to text either, as words are invariably wrong, and having to proofread for and correct those fuckups still feels let's... call... it... "very Fisher-Price"....

~voidstar wrote (thread):

i'm starting to feel like a chump for backing the librem 5 instead of going for a pinephone. i still have no idea when mine will arrive, 3.5 years later.

~edisondotme wrote (thread):

I like using my desktop as much as possible.

My phone should be a utility more so than a convenient and comfortable entertainment device. It's very good at the latter though much to my attention span's demise.

To be a truly useful device on the go, it *must* run an AOSP (I use Graphene OS now) so as to be compatible with

my mapping applications of choice

my e-tickets for the train

encrypted messaging (matrix)

my ride summoning application of choice

etc

Things like these can't be done on a "dumb" phone unfortunately, so I'm stuck using a smart phone which comes with the unfortunate side effect of also having a wealth of distraction at my finger tips.