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- cross-posted to:
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Anything but a removable battery and SD card slot
Hey, a real keyboard is a massive change.
SD isn’t needed like it used to be, my current phone (old Pixel) is 128gb, all my personal data is synced to home automatically. Anything extra I need I can grab via Resilio Sync.
An SD slot would be nice to have, but since you can’t do things like change them on the fly they have their own limitations.
Removable battery is less of an issue too. Batteries have gotten better, and OS efficiency has improved tremendously. Replacing a battery is pretty straightforward anymore, I haven’t broken a screen doing it in years.
Less of an issue yes, but still massively better than not having them.
Having to rely on an internet connection to access all your files is not good. Even more so if you’re using a paid proprietary software. With an SD card you can load it up with files and take it with you. And swap it between devices if you want.
As for removable battery, there is no substitute for being able to go from 0% to 100% battery or replace an old worn battery in seconds. It was so useful.
Manufacturers want us to pay for their cloud services and buy their latest device when the battery fails on the old one. Removing the SD card slot and gluing on the back panels to stop users swapping batteries with ease is for their benefit and not ours
And I am here for it. At much lower prices than they are currently using.
QWERTY meshtastic devices too
I’d absolutely love an actual keyboard for my phone. I don’t need all that much screnspace anyway, all I do is text friends, take calls once in a full moon, and write comments on Lemmy.
And no AI?
And they wont because they cant figure out how to have it all at the same time:
- move out of the way of the big screen for watching video
- be easy enough to switch to and tactile enough to be worth using it more often than the touch screen
- doesnt make the phone too thick
- doesn’t make the phone too long
- doesn’t make the phone so complicated mechanically that it falls apart in a year because they refuse to build it with better parts to last no matter the situation
You can do some of these but not all of them at once.
These will continue to be gimmicks and not mainstream.
I think there’s plenty of room between gimmick and mainstream for a viable product.
Not everyone cares if a phone is a little thicker if it means they get a real keyboard.
As for the other challenges, Sony/Ericsson proved 15 years ago that they can be overcome, with the Xperia Mini Pro.
I tried the Galaxy S25 Edge for about a week. I loved how thin it felt. Unfortunately, the feeling was all it was worth. The battery was very bad, and despite being two years newer than my current phone, didn’t appear to perform better in any respect.
It seems performance is plateaued, and while most of the tech industry is gambling on AI being the next big thing, most people aren’t impressed. It seems like a great time to try a wider variety of phones out on the market.
None of those are a problem to me, and enough people that there are now at least 2 phones with keyboards out.
Screen keyboards are FUCKING AWFUL. I could type 10x faster on my 2005 Palm Treo, without looking at the phone than I can with a brand new phone, even with autoincorrect.
I’ve bought the Clicks keyboard for my iPhone 16 but was unhappy with it being a huge brick while in that case. And the effort to swap cases often keeps me from using it.
Looks like they’ve heard my prayers because they’re now releasing a MagSafe+Bluetooth slider keyboard - which also brings a small power boost. I hope this is going to be as good as it sounds.
form-factor dislikes aside, would you say the function and feedback of the keyboard was good? I’m on the pre-order list for the Bluetooth keyboard you mentioned, and I’m so hopeful that it makes the subtle difference I hope for it.
While I would have preferred the BlackBerry Classic style of keyboard because I think it looks cooler, I must admit I didn’t have any issues with the keys, their clickiness or finding them blindly. The keyboard types really awesome.
My main issue is the muscle memory from my BlackBerry days which had the Shift key at the bottom where the Clicks has the 123 key. But that’s getting better the more often I use the Clicks.
Definitely interested in the concept, but $500 for the Clicks that’s described as something with considerably fewer features is… not convincing, unfortunately. Curious to see how these do.
The nearest thing we have to a QWERTY keyboard on a modern phone is the F(x)tec Pro¹X which has a pitiful battery and a 7 year old processor, but it also has a sliding keyboard and great custom ROM support.
