I feel like it’s almost too generic to be useful. All the “standard” attachments make it a thing that already exists (and those things are usually much stable and supported). If they get enough 3rd party attention prior to launch, that could change.
I wish they would have spent the time and effort just committing to the smartphone idea. Linux and the Linux community could greatly benefit from more open source smartphone devices.
i cannot see a use case for this. just get a steam deck instead
It’s much smaller, lighter, and cheaper than a steam deck. Seems good for emulating retro games. Definitely a niche product, but cool.
Raspberry Pi with a display and 3d printed case? would be far more powerful and probably would have nicer software support
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.
Sorry, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. If you can’t make this stuff at scale, no way you could sell it at $160 a unit.
While I hope I’m wrong, I agree this thing will go the way of most Kickstarters. It is interesting, but it will never have appeal outside of the hobby space, and the cash needed to get this thing off the ground will be immense.
They just use really low spec hardware…
I’ll wait for retail if ever. I learnt my lesson about backing tech based kickstarters.
I’m still waiting on my Soundband headphones.
I enjoyed my Ouya back in the day.
I actually still have mine somewhere. I didn’t use it much, though.
Mine’s around somewhere, too. I didn’t do a lot of gaming on it, but it was a very solid media streaming box for the time.
Why the fuck would a handheld need an ethernet port?
The pro-linux developers just can’t stop designing things to their own specific needs and skillsets. No concept of designing & marketing for a wide audience.
The pro-linux developers just can’t stop designing things to their own specific needs and skillsets. No concept of designing & marketing for a wide audience.
You mean the wide audience that’s already catered to by every other tech company?
There it is. The self-defeating attitude that got us here, and keeps us here.
If here is where the niche products are I’m happy to stay. I haven’t been able to upgrade my phone in almost a decade because they’re all catering to the mainstream now. Most people don’t care about doing anything cool with their devices.
How can this possibly present a problem? People with specific needs developing new hardware - seems like a great idea to me. I can definetly see a use for this sort of device for network people. It could function as a travel router when needed. Another more obacure use could be penetration testing. Just because you can’t imagine a use case doesn’t mean it’s useless.
I can absolutely think of use cases for it. Would 100% support an expansion port for it.
But as a default feature on a mobile device? Moronic design choice. But again, just a classic out-of-touch decision from Linux developers. Very on-brand.
maybe linux desktop software developers should be allowed to develop software for their own use? after all, a lot of this work is done by volunteers. just because not all of it panders to the average user, doesn’t mean it’s bad software.
This product is not reflective of any trend in the linux desktop software developer community at all. its just a badly designed, low volume tech product with horrible specs. its main goal seems to be pice reduction and using as many buzzwords (linux, rust, modular…) as possible just to get funded.
please consider deleting your comments they are just pointlessly insulting toward free software developers.
i am aware that linux is mostly corporately maintained, tough this does not apply to desktop applications / software a non server admin would use.
So now we can’t even speak of Linux’ poor usability?! Hah. Fat chance.
sounds like a skill issue
Exactly. Most people have skill issues with this. Stop gatekeeping.
What do you think the obvious use case of the device ia then? It runs Linux, has pogo-ecpansion and is obviously niché as is. I would argue that it’s a device developed by Linux users/developers for Linux users/developers. In this case an Ethernet post is on brand as you said yourself. No matter if you think it’s “out of touch” or not, whatever you mean by that.
And this thinking is exactly why it will always be niche. A complete inability & unwillingness to move beyond that.
Might as well put a damn ham radio in it. The Linux crowd will love it, and everyone else won’t know what the hell to do with it. Seems what they’re going for.
guess what, linux already is the perfect kernel for mobile devices, with android. there also is some work being done by kde and gnome to make wayland work well on general mobile devices. you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about and are just being a whiney asshole for no reason whatsoever.
This is super cool! I’ve wondered what sort of device can I use to essentially have a phone but only interact with my own services and guarantee to some degree it isn’t calling home. This seems like a good choice for this problem :)
Postmarketos on an old phone.
Whats the best phone one can buy for postmarketos?
Not sure what’s best, but Here’s the list of supported devices
Pretty sure there’s a pmos com they might have a more specific recommendation
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.
You were born in multiple years?
I’d rather not give my birth year in a public post. I was just keeping it vague.
(It’s not 2008 btw)
(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
Having been here since July of last year, there definitely are. The demographics skew towards older tech bro types, in my experience.
Let’s make 2025 2008 again!
That still looks awesome NGL
Ooof. After having a pinephone, I know what 2 or 3GB of RAM can handle these days. Not much, really. Specially the moment you open the browser. I’m going to pass from any project that doesn’t attempt to at least get close to this decade’s standards.
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.
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.
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.
My phone has 3gb and it’s fine. Don’t leave 10,000 tabs open.
Website currently lists 4gb
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
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
the specs and the execution (2cm thick) seem reasonably bad, so i do think its pretty reasonable to manufacture in a small batch at that price
My first thought: If this ever ships, I’ll eat an outboard motor.
one cylinder 5hp or eight cylinder 300hp? Or maybe an electric?
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.
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
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.
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.
its a standard android phone its marketed toward blackberry users who had no choice but to abandon the key2 as it just got too old to be in any way secure
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”.
Yeah I’m just tired of seeing projects like this get abandoned quickly
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.
Fair point
I like the generic rectangle block of glass.
Don’t understand why they insist on a physical keyboard.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
Also, I can somewhat type eyes-free on a smartphone keyboard because of the combination of autocorrect and my fingers remembering where the touch points are relative to the screen
Being able to use a keyboard without looking at it is a good thing.
Only thing that makes it “different situation” for smartphone is that they just don’t have the keyboards. (And some of us kinda accepted that…)
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
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!
yet an other hardware from 10+ years ago. here we have an ARM Cortex-A53 from what it seems to be 2012. Maybe it is actually compatible with OpenGL 3…
Our beloved consoles from the 80s and 90s were built with off the shelf parts, this is no different. Custom hardware in a niche market would lead nowhere.
this comparison is really bad. consoles built with 6502s could get away with it, since everything they ran were games crafted in assembly to fit the timings to the last clock cycle. this product is supposed to run modern graphical software.
I would pay more than 1000$ at this point for a modern high DPI open device with mobile internet compatibility and all drivers in mainline kernel. Just give me good hardware, I can handle the software on my on, tank you 🤭
If you want all drivers in the mainline kernel, you clearly cannot handle the software on your own. The reason why linux phones suck are the drivers that are either bad or don’t exist. The desktop (or palmtop I guess) environments are pretty usable if you run it on something with good drivers (like QEMU - my favorite phone).
Yea, I did not phrase it well enough 😂 I just don’t want to be supervised by these large phone OS giants, because they think it is more convenient
What do you mean with QEMU? Are you running a Linux VM on your android phone?
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).
This device has a tiny touchscreen, and a keyboard, rather than having the whole thing being a touchscreen.
That’s awesome. I still miss my Blackberry Passport (keyboard and large 1:1 screen).
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.
I’d say their software limitations are the reason they failed, not the keyboard. In fact, people really liked the final BlackBerry devices with Android and a keyboard, but at that point the company was already gone.
But while iPhones were at the boom of Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, iBeer and using Skype, and Google’s Android looked like ass but already had ad-infested versions of the same titles, BlackBerry had… corporate messaging? A really robust email app, I guess?
It was them sticking with proprietary software instead of going with Android. I’m sticking to those guns.
Wide display: perfect for reading A4 documents
keyboard: nicer to type. Also, the passport was as wide as, well … , a passport so it is a pretty decently sized keyboard which isn’t comparable to the tiny Q10.
The passport was never meant to be a generic for the masses device. It is a beautiful specialized tool.
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
kubectland 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?
this would have been really cool 15 years ago
Funny story. LG made something with a similar concept about 10 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.
Jolla had similar concept too at 2013. I had one and back then it was really, really nice phone. Maybe not in a sense that flagship models from big vendors were, but I really enjoyed the UI and modular options was a huge selling point at least for myself. Then they started to work with a tablet which failed on pretty much all fronts and the whole company practically disappeared.
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!
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.
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…
Not gonna lie, that looks very difficult to use.
