- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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My current Android phone has 4GB and it’s really smooth. I’ve got 90 Firefox tabs open and several apps. I’d love to see that level of optimization in a startup, but more RAM will just mask the bad optimization.
As an ex-Andrpid dev, all this optimization is what killed the creativity. Every feature you currently have is hyperoptimized (even with dedicated battery optimizations turned off for the most popular apps), and as a result nothing you can’t easily change is changeable anymore.
Want a widget that self updates every couple minutes by connecting to the internet? Can’t have that, even if the user explicitly accepts it. Want to customize behavior of things in the settings? Nope. Want to hook into the phone memory and do crazy hacks? Not even with root. Want to keep running some checks to determine when to send a notification? Can’t do that either, non-push notifications are all scheduled in advance.
Specially the moment you open the browser
I’d be curious, did you profile if it’s for all pages or only some? I’d expect e.g. Facebook or Instagram to be more demanding than Lemmy or ProtonMail but to be honest I have no idea.
I had a Windows Phone with 2GB of memory before, even (old) Reddit was horrendous, let alone Proton Mail with all its JavaScript and images.
Prefetching, prediction, media, infinite loading (gradually) or aggressive tracking can increase the usage.
I’ve had a single jira page use 6GB on Firefox.At least with that 6gb you get the nice, streamlined, intuitive and responsive user experience that we all know and love Atlassian for.
Website currently lists 4gb
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That looks amazing.
… For 2008.
2008 was awesome!
Being on Lemmy sometimes makes me feel like everyone here is old. Y’all talking about the years that I was born in as if it was like yesterday.
Worry not: in 20 years’ time people born in 2028 will all pretty much look like kids to you.
(They are, that’s why everyone gets bent out of shape when boomers are criticized here)
I doubt there are a lot of boomers here
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I’d rather not give my birth year in a public post. I was just keeping it vague.
(It’s not 2008 btw)
Let’s make 2025 2008 again!
That still looks awesome NGL
Can I just send you five years worth of „we’re sorry we’re behind schedule” messages and then ghost you instead? If so send me $159
My first thought: If this ever ships, I’ll eat an outboard motor.
I will do it for $149, don’t be stupid and come to me!!!
$145.99 with me, just look at these CU-RAH-ZY savings!!!
I’ll do it for free. Just going it for the love of the game
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I see a lot of negativity in the comments. And yeah, this thing probably isn’t something I’m going to get, but at least they are trying something that isn’t a generic rectangle of glass like all the others. I miss the days of fun gadgets.
Fun useful gadgets. A gadget for the sake of a gadget is just another word for “e-waste”.
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I get it, but a gentle reminder, often the best way for society to have an awesome projects is to have a lot of projects.
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I like the generic rectangle block of glass.
Don’t understand why they insist on a physical keyboard.I don’t mind it, but I also don’t hate that people are trying something new! Maybe it fails, but maybe it’s awesome!
i am personally sick of shiny rectangles. physical keyboards are the buttons on your cars dash instead of the shiny rectangle on your car’s dash.
Cars’ buttons need to be used while preferably not looking at them, that’s a pretty different situation to a smartphone
I much prefer physical keyboards and find it difficult to use touchscreen, so a mobile, qwerty keyboard sounds great to me.
What phones u guys been using for the last 15 years? I haven’t seen slide out keyboards for about that long
A little worried that with swapping those components like that, it’s trying to be too many things for too many different groups of people instead of one exact thing.
I think all I really want is something shaped like this with a keyboard, like an old Blackberry that could be used as a terminal.
I agree that id like a nice handheld terminal, but dont a lot of people like handheld emulation consoles? Hell both of those sound great to me. I would totally get both the game pad and keyboard if i went for it.
My real concern is that it would be garbage and/or the company would fold and support would become non existent.
Maybe i just got burned by pocketchip
Still have my Pocket CHIP. I look at it sometimes and sigh, thinking about what could have been.
There are a couple resources around to bring it up to something approaching working on the internet, but not much, and not complete, last I checked.
Thing was great for playing terminal roguelikes, though.
Yep its one of the bigger issues. I wanted to get a uconsole, but ive heard the support is not the greatest. And the wait times are horrendous for the hardware.
A little worried that with swapping those components like that, it’s trying to be too many things for too many different groups of people instead of one exact thing.
Isn’t that exactly what made Raspberry Pis a massive hit? Being able to be so many different things for so many different groups of people, at a reasonable price point, maximizing the groups it appealed to?
Yeah, but raspberry handhelds are chonky at best.
Right, which is why I’m implying this could be a hit because it’s the right form factor aimed at a myriad of use-cases.
😏I see what you did there, myriad is awesome
like the unihertz titan slim?
Very odd specs page: “256GB memory”, “Face ID”, “Advanced GPS”, etc, To me this does not look trustworthy at all.
Basically Android is Linux but…in weirdest way if i must say.
Now…we just need to make it modular right…???I’m intrigued simply because it’s not Android but the keyboard and gamepad are better done with existing products like the click keyboard and Gamesir.
I’ve learned not to get my hopes up with kickstarters but I’ll keep an eye on this one
I’m still too dumb to learn… Ask me about my OKPad! In fact, ask me for my OKPad. Please, take the god awful thing off my hands!
Ok… I’ll bite…but for me to take it off your hands I’ll need to get a $50 deposit, and another $100 due after it’s arrived to me, you can pay shipping and duties as well…
Oh, it’s awful! I mean, I knew it was going to be a bit heavier, with the dual screens, but I figured for media and stuff I could use it like a laptop. What I didn’t know? No keyboard on the e-ink. If you have it in landscape, you have a giant, unusable keyboard on the LCD part. No backlight on the e-ink. No way to move apps from one screen to the other without closing them out completely. But this is the part that really bakes my bacon… No portrait mode on the e-ink side. None. The good eReader review seems to have missed that it’s absolutely, 100%, stuck in landscape! Also, the battery is awful. I listened to a podcast for 10 minutes, display off, and burnt 10% of the battery. I have 10-year-old laptops with better battery life. I asked for a return/refund, but of course, crickets. Their only support is apparently on a Facebook page. I won’t be getting Facebook any time soon, but I am told that they are ignoring support requests anyways.
My interest is piqued, but it doesn’t have a native usb-c? Only old usb-a? Am I reading that right? The c is a part of one of the attachments? Don’t love that.
I wonder who this is made for?
The article calls it a “smartphone sized pocket computer”, but that describes smartphones too; they already are pocket computers. And they’ve had decades of design and development behind them.
So… This device has a tiny touchscreen, and a keyboard, rather than having the whole thing being a touchscreen. So instead it has a modular bottom half… Which… Sounds like it’s trying to solve a problem that would’ve been a problem in like… The 90s, maybe, but has been solved by using… A touchscreen that can change the type of input it is flexibly, like smartphones do.
It can’t call, like a smartphone, despite being a smartphone sized device. It has USB A 2.0 sockets and an Ethernet socket… Which makes it once again sound incredibly out-dated, like a device found in a time capsule, because USB C is smaller and faster than USB A 2.0, and can potentially be used for damn near anything. Which includes connecting to the Internet.
Its battery looks very weak. Its CPU looks very weak. It has a tiny amount of RAM, and a tiny amount of storage. It is outclassed by any affordable, midrange smartphone, at nearly the same price too (if you avoid big brand names).
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Tiny keyboards were a nightmare. There’s a reason why the Blackberry failed. You might like it, but then you’re part of a minority.
And they didn’t fail because of their keyboard…
Yeah they did. It was a pretty major factor. The moment touchscreen phones began to exist, Blackberry became past-tense.
It was them sticking with proprietary software instead of going with Android. I’m sticking to those guns.
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For people who like a concept more than practicality. There’s maybe a handful use cases that this specific device fits in that isn’t covered better by existing tech, but I guarantee if that thing actually gets kickstarted and arrives severely delayed in several years, it’ll show up in a couple YouTube videos with people sort of uncertain what to use it for, and in the vast majority of cases it’ll end up in some drawers after having been used a few hours tops.
My thoughts exactly. I’ve seen several such devices already, probably the most expensive and over-designed one being the Apple VR, and it’s always the same story.
Full-size usb, Ethernet and keyboard mean you can use it as a Linux computer, install arbitrary debian packages, run shell scripts, python scripts, and you don’t need any dongles. This is the differential factor. You can’t do the same on a smartphone, and it’s not supposed to be a smartphone. Why would you need a separate sim card when you can simply tether Internet from your phone?
I get that this device isn’t for you, but there are people who don’t want to write and maintain apps through apps stores and simply want to copy simple scripts into a small device they can have with them. It’s a niche market and good for them for trying to fill that niche.
I wonder what they use for charging port if not usb c…
You can do all that with USB C and a touch keyboard. There is no good reason under the sun to make a device that is this dated in concept.
Whatever the market is they’re trying to fill, it’ll be so extremely niche that this product is already a failure. It’s not the first time some kind of ultra niche product from kickstarter failed before launch because except for a small handful even cared.
How do you install utilities like
kubectl
and azure CLI on Android?I can do that and more on my Pinephone running Kali Nethunter. While it’s mostly a gimmick with awfull battery life, I’ve already used it a few times mostly in regards to wifi pentesting for my cyber-sec job, i.e when going to lunch onsite and you notice a new wifi AP you didn’t see when inside the office you’re working on.
And since it has an USB-C, I can simply plug in a dock with two USB-As, Ethernet, PD and HDMI, to turn it into a full-fledged Kali desktop.
Pinephone looks great and the keyboard case seems very ergonomic. Fo you use it as your daily driver?
If you get a phone and install PostmarketOS on it, you could also get pretty far on it, couldn’t you?
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It’s much smaller, lighter, and cheaper than a steam deck. Seems good for emulating retro games. Definitely a niche product, but cool.
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Maybe. But that means a lot more diy, and once your done with buying a pi, screen, battery, and all the 3d prints, you’re in about $160 anyway.
A user after my own heart.
Technically the Deck is more expensive but that’s exactly what I did, went with a Steam Deck.
There’s also Samsung DeX or other desktop-like experiences from an Android device.
this would have been really cool 15 years ago
Funny story. LG made something with a similar concept about 15 years ago and it never really took off. The LG G5 was a modular smart phone that was supposed to have a bunch of cool modules, but they never came to fruition.
I had one, but mostly because I loved having a swappable battery. Never had to charge my phone, I would just have a spare battery charging on my desk and I would swap it out before I left the house.
Motorola had a similar phone. It was cool at the time, but just never took off. It was the Moto Z series.
I’m intrigued. And although I read the article, I’m not entirely sure who or what this is for. It’s cool, but… what?
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I’m thinking about crafting a phone out if a raspberry compute module (so I can upgrade my device easy with new computing modules released)
I want to add a battery, a modem, a touchscreen and a usb-PD port with video out compatibility
Maybe a little cam to scan documents as well…
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I think it’s for the Hacker News crowd that’s always clamoring for smaller phones, or phones with a physical keyboard. Potentially for parents to give to their young children, to be able to contact them without getting them addicted to screens right away.
Not sure how big those markets are though.
I feel like this would fit in some unexpected areas of mobile computing. Music, interfacing with other equipment (e.g. industrial computing), or other places where people might normally take a full laptop where that’s kind of overkill.
I’m not really sure, and I kind of wish I had a need for one.
If that keyboard module isn’t extremely securely attached on there, I can 100% guarantee it is breaking in my pocket.
Would have much preferred if they were going to have just one base unit with keyboard. Other modules could fit over that.
Interesting I just saw another handheld Linux device on YouTube earlier today that is launching soon. Namely the Pilet. I’m kinda interested in something like this. Though I’m not sure for what.