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 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 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
Nokia 105, Wish it had qwerty though.
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
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 don’t mind it, but I also don’t hate that people are trying something new! Maybe it fails, but maybe it’s awesome!
Well that looks cool. I just hope I would have use for such device.
I wonder how they plan to keep updating this Mechanix OS after initial sales slow down
It’s going to be just like my pocket chip and die quickly after in terms of software support. Where I had to run my own hacks and also run archive debian repositories for the hardware itself only for the flash to die a year afterwards. I can say though it was the coolest device I had and hacking it was really neat especially with the UI and scaling apps on the device.
Cool emulation machine and design, even if it isn’t the most practical thing ever.
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).
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.
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.
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?
I tried it like a year ago, maybe more, and it wasn’t ready for that. The battery life was awfull (which was a SW issue of the OS not being able to stand-by properly), and accepting calls wasn’t really reliable. It’s more of a gimmick and great as a side-phone, but I wouldn’t use it as a daily driver.
But the situation might’ve changed.
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.
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.
Motorola had a similar phone. It was cool at the time, but just never took off. It was the Moto Z series.
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
My first thought: If this ever ships, I’ll eat an outboard motor.
one cylinder 5hp or eight cylinder 300hp? Or maybe an electric?
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
3gb RAM? 32gb emmc? This feels a bit like a raspberry pi project. Up the specs at least 6gb to at least no[t look like yet another microdeck with emulators, please… I like the concept, but as is, it leaves plenty to be desired
Netbooks need to come back with modern hardware.
If I need an ultra-portable computer one in a usable form factor would be amazing.
What I like about this is that I could theorhetically install a non-QWERTY keyboard instead of being locked to such an inefficient layout. Yes, eventually you can learn to touch type, but learning it would be nice to have the keys since it will be a nonstandard layout at that size & when you hand it off to other folks, it’d be completely unexpected to hit
q& get a'.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.
Website currently lists 4gb
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.
That looks amazing.
… For 2008.
2008 was awesome!
Let’s make 2025 2008 again!
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.
That still looks awesome NGL
It looks cool and all, but its probably going to have like 400mb of ram and an rp2040 like every other linux handheld device.
rp2040 can’t run linux?
thats part of the joke.
It has a 3gb ram and an a53
Perfectly reasonable specs
Not for 2025, sorry.
My phone has 16 GB of RAM, 3 GB is ridiculous, especially with the modern web.
With 640x480 screen i doubt it’ll be used for web browsing, unless you use lynx. Firefox in a pinch, but my guess is this will appeal mostly to Linux terminal users.
Was your phone $150?
Would you buy one that is? (assume the specs that this thing has, also consider that your answer has to be valid when you eventually get it in 5 years or so)
yet an other hardware from 10+ years ago. here we have an ARM Cortex-A53 from what it seems to be 2012. Maybe it is actually compatible with OpenGL 3…
Our beloved consoles from the 80s and 90s were built with off the shelf parts, this is no different. Custom hardware in a niche market would lead nowhere.
this comparison is really bad. consoles built with 6502s could get away with it, since everything they ran were games crafted in assembly to fit the timings to the last clock cycle. this product is supposed to run modern graphical software.
I would pay more than 1000$ 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?
It was a joke about the fact that PostmarketOS considers only QEMU a “main” device. Every real phone is in the “community” section because they’re too buggy. So the only good device to run that OS on is a virtual one running inside your desktop.
I would really love a return to a concept where you have a tablet that docks into a full size laptop form factor. Even better if the dock can have a graphics card.
Agree. Sometimes I want a tablet, sometimes a laptop but I don’t need or want 2 separate devices of that size. I recall quite a few Android projects (Mirabook, Project Linda) that would use a phone with a laptop dock but I’d prefer a phone as a standalone device and a secondary, larger & more powerful, device that can have multiple forms.
yeah I also don’t want android.
Was just using that as an example. It would be great to see a Linux device with this capability. I have played around with a few Linux phones and convergence was a feature that received attention so I think there’s hope.
really feel framework is perfect for this. Make the screen a tablet. Have the additional graphics and hard drive on the base. Actually the microsoft surface book was basically what I want but with a company that sells it with linux and supports it with their company distro.
Microsoft still make the surface pro
