Still the same problem. There are lots of small wireless keyboards, you can probably get one like that for $10 (you could 10 years ago). Still can’t use it in a pinch without a decent surface.
A had a few keyboards…
Compare to this, this or this which you just hold in the hand like a normal phone.
Yes, it looks truly crap tho. I hear there’s some issue regarding BlackBerry patents, but a 3-row keyboard is pretty worthless. Combined with all its other issues, it wasn’t enough even for me to get interested.
Speaking of which, fuck dead companies keeping patents.
We are entering in an age of post-western-capitalism, where this IP trolling system will die down considerably. Until then, Aliexpress noname basement engineers are your friend.
Blackberry these days works in cybersecurity field and sells a very shitty cloud antivirus Cylance. Most experienced AV users meme it as something that flags everything as malware to look good.
Fun fact, there was a qwerty keypad phone in India sold not long ago, running KaiOS. Ultra cheap too, like under $30 range I think, but exclusive to one cell provider and not exported.
It looked good. Shows that it’s doable. I don’t understand why don’t those noname basement dwellers cobble up something like it. There’s hundreds of phone models made every year and the Chinese companies of all kinds are able to make or copy anything. Super easy sell if you ask me, in the market where it’s h hard to stand out.
If they are not making it, you can assume how niche it has gotten. There used to be a Nokia XpressMusic phone with slider keyboard from the Symbian era that I liked a lot back then.
I’m not saying it’s not niche, but also nobody does it properly. Either overengineered and expensive like the last few BB models, or really crappy like the UniHertz. It just needs something… Normal. BB Key2LE was on the right track (I was saving up for it), but by the time it came out, BB was on its last legs and couldn’t support the concept any longer.
I’m not saying designing phones is simple, but within all those thousands of models, many of which have all kinds of crazy experiments, there 100% has to be space to slap a keypad in one. Do it properly, then just update the cpu every 2 years for a newer model.
Demographics need to prove there are more Android keyboard enjoyers than Linux desktop users on this planet to even make sense financially. Right now, they are probably lesser than Gentoo and Windows 98 users combined. At this point, you will only get Unihertz and some Kickstarters, if any. It is a very… unsolvable problem.
Still the same problem. There are lots of small wireless keyboards, you can probably get one like that for $10 (you could 10 years ago). Still can’t use it in a pinch without a decent surface.
A had a few keyboards…
Compare to this, this or this which you just hold in the hand like a normal phone.
You are not going to get it anywhere except Unihertz (and some noname Chinese phones) that makes such quirky phones. They do have a keyboard model.
Yes, it looks truly crap tho. I hear there’s some issue regarding BlackBerry patents, but a 3-row keyboard is pretty worthless. Combined with all its other issues, it wasn’t enough even for me to get interested.
Speaking of which, fuck dead companies keeping patents.
We are entering in an age of post-western-capitalism, where this IP trolling system will die down considerably. Until then, Aliexpress noname basement engineers are your friend.
Blackberry these days works in cybersecurity field and sells a very shitty cloud antivirus Cylance. Most experienced AV users meme it as something that flags everything as malware to look good.
Fun fact, there was a qwerty keypad phone in India sold not long ago, running KaiOS. Ultra cheap too, like under $30 range I think, but exclusive to one cell provider and not exported.
It looked good. Shows that it’s doable. I don’t understand why don’t those noname basement dwellers cobble up something like it. There’s hundreds of phone models made every year and the Chinese companies of all kinds are able to make or copy anything. Super easy sell if you ask me, in the market where it’s h hard to stand out.
If they are not making it, you can assume how niche it has gotten. There used to be a Nokia XpressMusic phone with slider keyboard from the Symbian era that I liked a lot back then.
I’m not saying it’s not niche, but also nobody does it properly. Either overengineered and expensive like the last few BB models, or really crappy like the UniHertz. It just needs something… Normal. BB Key2LE was on the right track (I was saving up for it), but by the time it came out, BB was on its last legs and couldn’t support the concept any longer.
I’m not saying designing phones is simple, but within all those thousands of models, many of which have all kinds of crazy experiments, there 100% has to be space to slap a keypad in one. Do it properly, then just update the cpu every 2 years for a newer model.
Demographics need to prove there are more Android keyboard enjoyers than Linux desktop users on this planet to even make sense financially. Right now, they are probably lesser than Gentoo and Windows 98 users combined. At this point, you will only get Unihertz and some Kickstarters, if any. It is a very… unsolvable problem.
We won’t know until someone does it.
We have all kinds of Android gaming devices of all shapes with buttons. So they can do buttons. Just stick it in the right shape.