A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a physical keyboard, running android or Linux.
These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text.
Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC Desire-Z. These were the last of their species.
the problem with every single pandora-spin off is this: they try to do a full product and sell it like a finished product (mostly to game pirates)
What they should do: work on the case, and do something like the ergo-dox cases[0], where the case walls are a pile of 0.5" planes, so you can have as much space inside for your additions as you want. And then on the top of the case include the LCD clamshell and the keyboard/joypad. Because, honestly, that is the ONLY good thing on the pandora-clones.
Then let the insides of the machine be whatever the user/kit-vendor wants. Raspi, android all-in-one, etc.
that way you don't get outdated inputs (compact flash in 2013!) or crappy cpus (EU$300 for a celeron in 2014). The keyboard and the screen will mostly stand the test of time better, for example, 720p for 90s game emulation is almost overkill.
i don't care about the money, i have and will in the future spend lots of money on useless things
what i'm always worried about with these projects is the potential lack of community engagement. tons of these type of things come out and die within six months because the major maker/hacker communities just do not give a damn about them, so they don't get iterated on or mixed with other things. makers/hackers are fundamentally cheap ie they like working with cheap components even if the overall scope creep on a project ends up eating a significant chunk of their salaries.
raspberry foundation did something really clever by going for the cheap/educational route. nearly everyone i know has heard/hacked on a raspberry pi
exciting to hear about and if the project makes it in terms of excitement within the maker/hacker communities, will definitely buy one
Depends on your perspective. What brought me around was comparing it to an iPhone - similar price, yet it addresses pretty much every standard nerd complaint about the mobile ecosystem (keyboard, free software phone, standard Linux). I felt that not buying one would be simply hypocritical :)
yes. it was so-so when launched. Then with every update it got WORSE. i kid you not.
for example, i will just list the worst case so you can have an idea: they updated the keyboard so that now the backspace also works as delete. But you have no control! it decides!
You carefully position the cursor on the middle of the line, press backspace to erase let's say, the http:// part of the url because you want to type in ftp://, well, though luck, because as soon as the cursor reaches the beginning and there is nothing else to 'backspace' on the left, they key becomes Delete right under your finger, while being pressed, and now it deletes the rest of the URL... it is maddening.
But, it had so much potential. The keyboard has touch capacitance on EACH KEY! so you could in theory use swipe type on the physical keyboard. sadly, the swipe type from blackberry is just garbage. And if you select any other soft keyboard, then nothing from the physical keyboard works. No prediction row, no cursor control using capacitance touch. not even shift or symb keys in some cases.
The last great phones for me where the N950 and N900.
Everyone is building what they think appeals to the "average consumer". With every yearly product iteration, features regress more towards the mean.
They just build bricks that look the same now, competing with each other on how many fractions of a millimeter can be shaved off. This is because phones are no longer seen as productivity devices, they're a status symbol like cars and jewelry. A keyboard increases thickness, which would be unthinkable for them.
I actually invested in a Jolla phone two years ago, but the promised hardware keyboard never quite panned out.
I recently and reluctantly retired my Droid 4, simply because Android 4.1 was getting old (no stable newer versions available) and the phone was too slow for newer apps.
Now I'm on a Blackberry Q5 - Purely for the physical keyboard. The downside is that I have to live with very limited app support :(
I totally agree. I used a NEC MobilePro 780 & 790 for a few years in the early/mid-2000s and it was awesome. It was small enough to slide into my pants pocket, yet still had a quite usable keyboard.
I loved the Palm Pre's form factor. The size, the sliding hardware keyboard, the way it felt like I was holding a smooth stone in my hand. It's probably the best phone I've ever owned, hardware-wise.
The manufacturing quality was abysmal, though. The first one I got had a defect whereby sliding the keyboard shut would cause the device to turn off. The second one I got after returning the first one had a defective screen.
Will this not be solved, partly and in a sense, by hologram keyboards? It seems your wish for a physical keyboard is not due to an enjoyment of the tactile nature of it but rather that it's quite hard to type on an in-screen virtual one.
Hologram keyboards would still seemingly require a surface to type on, though, so it wouldn't solve everything. One might imagine a future where the phone is in your pocket but a hologram screen + keyboard appears (somehow) in front of you. I'm just thinking out loud here.
You can't hold a phone by its holographic keyboard. That means you'd have to type with one hand. One of the big advantages of physical keyboards is the ability to type with 2 thumbs, or even 2 hands on devices like the Psion 5.
You can plug a usb keyboard into any Android device and it works fairly well for input. I can use an ssh program like ConnectBot as if it were a regular terminal with an attached keyboard.
To be more specific, I would like a BlackBerry Passport running Android or Linux. Additionally the keyboard should carry little LEDs so that switching keyboard layouts is easy.
These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text.
Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC Desire-Z. These were the last of their species.