Can we stop with this absolute fantasy about PCs that "fit in your pocket"?
The medium is the message, the form is the functionality.
Smartphones have been "pocketable PCs" for more than a decade already, but are dumbed down because their inputs and outputs are limited. You can't type effectively, your screen is small, your battery is limited. Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote? How about XFCE? Or GNOME? No, for a Smart TV we have purposefully made OSs that are limited in functionality such as Kodi, LibreELEC and others specifically because of the type of inputs and outputs needed.
I think the only way we could ever get a portable PC experience on the go is by having AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard and touchpad by somehow analyzing our hand movements on a hard surface in front of us. But that's only if we get to a point where said devices are fast and hold a decent battery, which, with current technology, is impossible.
No. It's not a fantasy. The Nokia N900 was amazing.
It functioned as a phone with a touchscreen to deliver the experience that had now become the dominant one.
But also, by sliding up the screen, it had a fully featured keyboard, and essentially transmogrified into a "pc that fits into your pocket".
So you could with a one handed push go from the touchscreen-only experience back to edit documents by using a combination of the keyboard and the touchscreen (with a stylus if neccessary).
I stopped using it because it lost software support and then the touchscreen stopped working, but I have it sitting here at my desk.
All the things you would use a phone for in the early 2010s:
* Phone calls
* Video calls over XMPP
* Text/XMPP messaging
* Web browsing
* Document editing
* Writing and receiving email
* Playing music ( it had a built in FM transmitter - how cool was that!)
* Setting Alarms
* weather widgets
* Writing PHP programms
* Writing python programms
* ssh-ing into servers
* gps navigation
* take and share pictures
* multi-colored status LEDs
* it had usb-otg so you could use as a flash drive
* share an gsm internet connection via USB
Some of these things work better with a touch screen - some work better with a slide-out physical keyboard... it was just a really good device.
Honest question: what is a real world use case for writing PHP or Python programs on a tiny laptop with a 7" display that wouldn't be better served by a 13" laptop. I can't imagine writing code while standing on a train, for example. But more important, I'm having trouble imagining what kind of work situation would require that.
> Honest question: what is a real world use case for writing PHP or Python programs on a tiny laptop with a 7" display that wouldn't be better served by a 13" laptop
A computer you can take everywhere when you need to squeeze in extra computer-time into any unplanned free moment opportunistically (e.g. Leetcode practice, dissertation crunch), or being on call and only need ssh & chat access 24/7.
I carried a high-DPI 7" tablet with a keyboard case to good effect. It was less of a physical burden than lugging around a 13-incher, and was inconspicuous when outdoors or places I may have felt unsafe carrying a laptop
> It was less of a physical burden than lugging around a 13-incher,
I guess this is a very personal thing, but I've always found the weight difference between a 7" tablet and a slim 13" laptop to be pretty minimal, and I walk-commute on average 3 miles a day carrying a laptop.
> and was inconspicuous when outdoors or places I may have felt unsafe carrying a laptop
It's probably a lifestyle choice, but if I were to feel unsafe using a laptop in a space, I probably wouldn't be able to focus enough to work, and instead of using a less conspicuous device, I would relocate somewhere that I felt safe. Also if I were on-call I would doubly want to be in a place where I felt I could focus completely on my work. I don't doubt that the market niche for inconspicuous general purpose computing devices exists, but I don't think it's huge.
> It's probably a lifestyle choice, but if I were to feel unsafe using a laptop in a space, I probably wouldn't be able to focus enough to work
You may have misunderstood the premise. I don't want to live my day-to-day life with a laptop on me 24/7, but I can tolerate a pocketable computer. Regular life involves activities in places without lockers - like typing up a dissertation chapter on the train to a ball game, or parking on streets that have occasional car break-ins, to have dinner with friends.
The idea is to make spontaneous computing on the go possible; so the device pretty much has to be on you all the time and everywhere, and I don't think a 13" laptop is a reasonable choice for that.
It doesn't have to only be about safety. I can't use my MBP 13 on the fold out tray of a coach seat. There are times where a less conspicuous device comes in handy.
A coach airplane seat? Depends on your body type maybe; I've done this with the 14" (and the 16" Intel) multiple times. Just don't set the screen angle such that it'll get caught by anything on the seat in front of you.
> I can't imagine writing code while standing on a train, for example.
This made me smile, because that used to be my morning commute. I had around an hour on a usually full train, and I could already start writing things that were on my mind. Everybody is a bit different.
Nevertheless, I have since learned to keep a better work-life balance. I also stopped commuting.
While all of these things are possible on a tiny PC, many of them are very sub-optimal - like how many languages are Turing-complete but not of equivalent use (e.g. assembly is not as useful as Rust in the vast majority of programming domains).
Things like "writing PHP/Python programs" and "document editing", while things that you can do on a pocket-sized laptop, are much better to do on a real laptop or desktop. A tiny PC will strain your eyes, decrease your reading, typing and interaction speed, hurt your neck, and react slowly relative to a full computer - regardless of whether you're using a soft-keyboard or a physical (but tiny) hardware keyboard.
Although ElCheapo may have thrown a lot of unnecessary junk into their comments, their point "The medium is the message, the form is the functionality." is still true - you don't want to use C# for tiny (kilobytes RAM) embedded devices and you don't want to use this pocket PC for writing code, even though you can.
Yes, it's suboptimal, but in many situations so is carrying around a full laptop, and the question becomes simply which tradeoffs works for you.
I've ssh'd in to fix issues from my phone many times because I was in locations where carrying a laptop would have been annoying and my phone let me. In that respect having a device that was suboptimal but serviceable saved me from carrying around a device that'd be better to use but a pain to drag around.
I've written short stories on my phone or my tablet because I happened to have an idea in a situation where I didn't carry a laptop with me.
In other situations I'd carry with me a tiny chromebook to be able to do more things without having to carry my full 17" laptop.
There's space for many form factors of devices which would be horrible for short term use but fine as an option for occasional use.
This may well fit into that mid-point to me as something more convenient and open than my phone, yet substantially smaller than my laptop to the point that it can fit in my jacket pockets at least the times of year where I'm wearing a heaver coat (and I'm in the UK, so that's a lot of the year).
Yup, absolutely. It's definitely true that it's better to have a more-capable device in your pocket than a less-capable one when a laptop or desktop isn't feasible - I completely agree.
I just wanted to point out that these devices are still significantly less efficient than a laptop or a desktop, because it's non-obvious to some people - including the throw10920 a decade ago, who thought that doing development on a phone when they had access to a desktop was a good idea. I wouldn't want to give other people that same impression, just like I wished I had never gotten it myself.
I used to think the only proper way of reading books is paper (or at least large format eink) but I see most people these days reading from tiny phone screens. Thanks to increased mobility they easily do it where it's too much hassle for me.
For many people with good eyesight it is just fine to use a small screen for programming.
Whether or not a large number of people do something isn't really relevant to whether its efficient or healthy. Many people in the US have addictions to social media (unhealthy) and use few keyboard shortcuts (inefficient) and draft emails on phone keyboards (inefficient).
It's also not fine to use a small screen for programming even if you have good eyesight, as it will worsen your eyesight even if you hold it as far away from your body as you can with your arms straight - the constant focusing on an object near your face will cause your eye muscles to weaken and give you myopia. You'll also damage your neck unless you hold your phone at eye (or at least chest) level - something that I've seen literally nobody do.
No, it's about what is practical and productive and habitual for a specific person. I hate large screen setups and I love drafting emails on the go and your opinion that it is somehow less healthy than doing that while stationary indoors (probably sitting, too) is just that, your opinion.
By that measure, looking at any screen or reading strains your eyes but I don't think you'll be switching exclusively to voice control programming and audiobooks any time soon because oh right this is not habitual or productive for you. (And if you do, now it strains your ears... I guess life itself is unhealthy, after all it's known to cause death.)
And no, it does not mean it causes nearsightedness. This is grandma's tale. Plenty of people have 100% vision while spending inordinate amounts of time in front of screens. Research points out this is more about spending too much time indoors, no matter screen size get enough sunlight on your retina especially as child.
I can only imagine how much nicer would it be to do the things I often do on the go (messaging, issue management), possibly more (programming), with proper physical keyboard. Swipe typing is just not helping much.
> No, it's about what is practical and productive and habitual for a specific person.
No, it's quite clearly not. In my comment, I stated "While all of these things are possible on a tiny PC, many of them are very sub-optimal" - explicitly stating that the domain of the comment was about efficiency (and then later brought in the topic of healthiness). If you start responding to that comment with arguments about what is "habitual", then your comment is off-topic.
> I hate large screen setups and I love drafting emails on the go
I don't care about what you like doing. This comment thread is not about that. It's about what is efficient and healthy. If you want to talk about what you like doing, find a thread where it's on-topic.
> your opinion that it is somehow less healthy
It's not an opinion - there's actual research that shows that smartphone use is linked to myopia[1]. As for being relatively less healthy, the only intrinsic difference between smartphones and desktops is screen size, and therefore how close you have to hold it to your face - which is worse for smartphones than desktops. So, smartphones are as bad or worse than desktops along all relevant axes.
> probably sitting, too
Because the vast majority of people do none of these productive behaviors consistently on a phone while walking, this just means that there's no difference between smartphones and desktops - doubly so because you can (but very few people do) set up a standing desk for a desktop - with a treadmill, even!
Furthermore, there's evidence that staring downwards (at a smartphone) for extended periods of time alters the shape of the spine in bad ways[2]. This health issue ranges from "much better" to "nonexistent" for desktops, depending on how they're set up.
> By that measure, looking at any screen or reading strains your eyes
Not "strains" - trains. Maintaining a constant focal distance causes your eyes to start to adapt to that focal distance, at the expense of others. And yes, it does. Humans aren't mean to read or look at screens for long periods of time either - it's just better to use screens that are larger and further from your face.
> but I don't think you'll be switching exclusively to voice control programming and audiobooks any time soon
Correct, because those things are less efficient. I want to try to maximize both efficiency and healthiness. Because those two things are in tension, this leads to an efficient frontier[3] where I have to pick a point on it, and voice control solutions are not on that efficient frontier.
> because oh right this is not habitual or productive for you
Again, this is not about "habitual" or "productive", this thread is about "efficient" and "healthy" and if you want to comment about other stuff, then find a relevant place to put it.
You also seem to be trading critical thought for sarcasm - I would advise against that, as it is neither efficient nor healthy.
> I can only imagine how much nicer would it be to do the things I often do on the go (messaging, issue management), possibly more (programming), with proper physical keyboard.
Yup, I'm not saying that a phone-sized hardware keyboard wouldn't be better than a soft keyboard - just that both are massively inferior to a full-sized hardware keyboard. I can hit 100 WPM on a desktop keyboard - which is faster than every single volunteer in this European study of 37k people[4]. I can virtually guarantee you that, for any amount of effort spent practicing, you'll be able to type faster on a normal keyboard than a phone keyboard, hardware or not.
Sorry, productive and efficient crucially differ how exactly?
> In my comment, I stated "While all of these things are possible on a tiny PC, many of them are very sub-optimal" - explicitly stating that the domain of the comment was about efficiency (and then later brought in the topic of healthiness).
And I stated that you're wrong.
If it is suboptimal/inefficient/unproductive to you as it is not how you are accustomed to do things, then sure. But not in absolute terms. Don't deny the experience of other people, it is as real as yours. It is optimal for me, and what is habitual is key. I would not trade being able to do work on the go for being chained to a desk, a chair, four walls and a large display because it is less efficient (it's all individual, I need fewer visual distractions, being able to fit more stuff on screen is harmful, and same reason I don't do video calls).
Furthermore, health is not orthogonal but an important prerequisite for sustainable efficiency and performance. To take it to extreme, some people would drug themselves to be more efficient in short term, so what?
Being able to do things on the go is not only more productive (or efficient if you like) because I can do it anywhere, but because fresh air, improved blood flow, and everything else helps me maintain the health that underlies that whole efficiency business you are discussing.
And I countered every one of your arguments, and you never responded to any of them. Your statement means literally nothing.
> Don't deny the experience of other people, it is as real as yours.
It's an extremely well-known fact of human psychology that human experience and subjective perception are extremely skewed and unreliable. I encourage you to peruse the list of cognitive biases on Wikipedia[1] as you clearly aren't familiar with them.
Furthermore, it doesn't matter that the experience of other humans is as real as mine, because we're not discussing something subjective like what flavor of ice cream tastes best - we're discussing objective topics - namely, efficiency and ergonomics.
> It is optimal for me
It is not optimal for you. Your subjective perception is not an indicator of optimality, which is an objective measurement.
> being able to fit more stuff on screen is harmful
False. Having a larger screen does not require you to put more stuff on it, and allows your eyes and brain to not work as hard to see things than on a tiny screen.
> To take it to extreme, some people would drug themselves to be more efficient in short term, so what?
I don't see how that's relevant? I neither said nor implied that anyone should pursue maximum efficiency at the cost of their own health, and that's not related to anything we've discussed so far. I'm just stating that phones are both less efficient and less healthy for you than desktops - that's it.
> productive (or efficient if you like) because I can do it anywhere
You're substituting your own definition of "efficient" for mine, the one we were originally using. Bad form.
The definition of "efficient" being used in this comment thread is, roughly, "work done per unit time":
> Things like "writing PHP/Python programs" and "document editing", while things that you can do on a pocket-sized laptop, are much better to do on a real laptop or desktop. A tiny PC will strain your eyes, decrease your reading, typing and interaction speed, hurt your neck, and react slowly relative to a full computer - regardless of whether you're using a soft-keyboard or a physical (but tiny) hardware keyboard.
...and for that definition, no, you will not be more productive "on the go" with your tiny phone than I will be at my desktop with my multi-monitor setup and full-sized mechanical keyboard.
If you want to use your own definition, find someplace where it's relevant.
> because fresh air, improved blood flow, and everything else helps me maintain the health that underlies that whole efficiency business you are discussing
Is there some law of physics that prevents me from standing up from my normal desk to get up and walk outside, or even set up a treadmill desk outside with my desktop? No? Then why are you bringing it up?
Regardless, the claim that those things will somehow overcome a massive difference in CPU performance, productivity software, screen real estate, and input mechanisms is somewhere between "absurd" and "insane". I know people that have lived horribly unhealthy lives for decades and can still easily out-perform someone on a phone. (I shouldn't have to say this, but apparently I do: I'm not advocating for this, merely pointing out that your claim isn't backed by reality)
Your comment is composed entirely of ridiculous claims, denials of basic mechanics of human cognition, and logical fallacies. Notably missing from it are responses to the points that I made.
Playing text adventures was a nice past time. I had Psion those days and a Nokia 6800. I really wonder what it would be like to have a nice android phone with a keyboard those days... But I guess this is mostly nostalgia.
Was my post confusing? Nothing you've written can't be done with an Android phone with a keyboard attachment. When is this super important general purpose computing thingy supposed to come into play?
The key is the keyboard is integrated and foldable, it's the convenience and portability that is key. With an android (with two exceptions), you have to have two separate pieces, something to put them on and then pair and charge both parts.
In short: You can pull it out of your pocket anywhere, type something with both thumbs on a full keyboard, then fold it down again in seconds.
There are Android phones with a full keyboard as well, but they are closed source/hardware.
First you say that with "android" (as if they made hardware) you can't have an integrated keyboard.
Then you say that Android phones with a full integrated keyboard actually exist.
But then you move the goalpost saying that they aren't open source/hardware. Which is false, by the way, since this device [https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/pro1] runs LineageOS, and phones with completely free software down to the firmware level don't exist, including the N900 which needs a binary blob to start the wifi module (as far as I know) and whose hardware is not open source in the slightest.
And even after all of this I've been given zero use cases that an Android phone can't provide with the proper application installed.
Let us be fair here: you moved the goalposts first by going from “it is an absolute fantasy” to, once people pointed out that they already exist, “but I can't see a use for one”.
Why even say this if you immediately proceed by not being fair?
Pocketable computers are not a "fantasy" in the sense that there aren't any devices capable of running a desktop OS while being pocketable. This was never the argument, as also demonstrated by my other replies in the thread. My argument is that using a pocketable device as a desktop or laptop is a fantasy. It's something that sounds very cool on paper and which has a small cult following, but in reality all these people would fare even better if someone wrote an Android app tailored to their use case.
Then it's an unfalsifiable argument and people are wasting their time discussing it with you in good faith. After I got my N900, I didn't feel a need to bring my laptop on short vacations, because I could do everything on it that I could on my laptop. But no matter what I say, you believe I'd be better served with a complete suite of apps that both are specifically tailored for me and don't exist.
Of course that's true. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if you wrote an entire gnutils userspace for Android, and gave me a slide out keyboard instead of obliterating half my screen if I need to do input, you would have given me something that is almost identical to an N900.
Your arguments would be much better-received if you were less abrasive and threw less manipulative language like "Can we stop with this absolute fantasy" in them.
>My argument is that using a pocketable device as a desktop or laptop is a fantasy
It's not. My GPD Micro PC is currently my daily driver laptop, and it fits in my back pocket. I have done CAD work on it with no trouble at all. There's no "Android app" that can compete with the universe of PC software.
You should try one before you make sweeping judgements about what is and isn't possible.
> >Let us be fair here
Why even say this if you immediately proceed by not being fair?
Pointing it hypocrisy is fair in my book. If you significant change of wording isn't a shift of the goal posts then neither is the others posters clarification.
And has yet to actually ship to anyone. I'm pretty sure people have been waiting ~2 years for their preorders to ship. Not to mention the specs are quite dated at this point. I think they even had to start making them with a newer chip because they weren't able to ship before the original chip lost support from Qualcomm.
How is the presence of an antenna in any way demonstrative of the general purpose computing capabilities of the N900 as opposed to "not pocketable PC" Androids? I believe that if I were to attach a USB radio module to my phone I could write an Android app to make use of it as a trasmitter.
There are FM dongles that plug into a headphone socket, but building it into the phone from the start says to me that Nokia really knew how people would want to use it.
If the point is you can transform an android device into a general purpose machine if you use unenumerable amounts of hardware addons and hacks. Then yes, of course you are right. It will be unuseable in practice which is generally what people want to do.
The integrated keyboard had a tab key, so autocomplete worked on the terminal. This was a really big deal that made the tiny keyboard much more useful for real work.
The Maemo distribution that the N900 ran was based on debian, and you could point apt to the standard package repositories to install pretty much any Linux software. This opened many, many possibilities - for example, I had an always-on computer in my pocket with WireShark installed. I could (and did) occasionally sniff wireless traffic to troubleshoot something. If you couldn't find a mobile app that would do what you wanted, you could usually install a desktop app and it'd work (though sometimes the UI was awkward on that small screen).
While most of the functionality can be replicated on a modern Android device, these pocket computers were different in a special way. The integrated physical keyboard, the tab key, the full Linux kernel and apt, all combined to create an experience that was distinctly different from Android. It really felt like a pocket-sized workstation - it was a full computer first, and pocket-sized second. Android smartphones are pocket-sized mobile devices first, and potential workstations second.
For example I could prepare presentations with it, or deal with long emails, and write code - all day long. While it was less comfortable compared to full-sized PC, it was normal, alright. Appearing in the same situation with any modern smartphone I would surrender immediately, because it would be literally crippling experience. Not to mention that it was technically much more flexible.
When I travelled a lot, I just brought a pocket Linux machine with keyboard (first the Zaurus, then Pandora, then GDP Pocket 1) and that was all a lot more comfortable hauling along than my laptop. I didn't have to do stretches of programming, but for small changes, or some server management, it was great. I am waiting for the Astro Slide with Linux to arrive.
I had one, my brother had one, honestly it was shit at everything you expect from a phone.
The only good point about it was that it had a full and integrated keyboard, and a Linux based OS you could use to manage your servers over ssh in extreme cases.
Answering calls on it was a hit or miss, the UI just froze for several seconds from the incredible stress of suddenly starting up the phone app when someone called you.
I'd much rather 1) separate my work from my personal life and 2) have a laptop in a backpack for when I know I might have to do work.
I remember vividly smashing the stylus into the unresponsive tft screen until it broke in a white rage. The n900 totally sucked, although it did look neat. The wifi sucked, the screen sucked, no capacitive touch. Also the battery sucked like one and a half hours screentime. And the apps they sucked. Oh and it was slow enough every webpage loaded would have you near tears in anticipation. But - to nokias credit, it did fit into your pocket, helpfully to compensate for the wad of cash absent after the purchase.
having a keyboard does not a PC make. The N900 was great to type on by cellphone standards but it was still a cell phone. Maemo is not a PC OS. It did not do what a PC did.
You could easily (and I did) put a full Debian user space on the N900, and maintain all the cell phone functionality. It offered a pretty complete Linux experience.
N900 was a great deal closer to a PC OS than any release of Android I've seen past Android 2.x. It even has X11 and a built in, honest-to-goodness version of apt! You can't say that about many phones these days.
I'm almost sure that with enough swearing and elbow grease I could replace the entire GUI with something that I can write myself to be tailor-made to my needs. Doing anything even close to this for Android seems like a daunting task.
> Smartphones have been "pocketable PCs" for more than a decade already, but are dumbed down because their inputs and outputs are limited.
I wish it was only about the i/o: pocket Bluetooth keyboards, mice and other i/o devices would be just a few bucks away. No, the problem is rather that phones/tablets use crippled dumbed down and tight closed operating systems that offer only a small fraction of the power a real computer offers, not to mention the huge privacy and security issues involved. Having the same hardware performance and storage of a good laptop means nothing if the OS doesn't offer a way to use it in a transparent and trustworthy way.
What is stopping you from adapting AOSP to have better keyboard integration? Android has been modified before to adapt to folding screens, tablets and multiple screens.
Locked bootloaders, for one. Even if you can unlock it, there's a disincentive to do so thanks to losing the SafetyNet status - which will brick a whole range of apps that refuse to run if it's not intact.
> Can we stop with this absolute fantasy about PCs that "fit in your pocket"?
No, because it isn't fantasy and i want those PCs that "fit in my pocket" - after all they do exist, see GPD's pocketable PCs.
> Smartphones have been "pocketable PCs" for more than a decade already
Smartphones have their on OSes, UX, applications, etc. The point of projects like GPD Win or the one linked above is to run the same programs, OS, etc as you'd run on a regular laptop or a desktop PC.
And this is something that can be useful, even if it isn't at the same frequency as a smartphone - they do not have the same use after all.
Personally i have a GPD Win 1 which is pretty much the same form factor as the pocketable PC linked in the article (actually it is better IMO because the joysticks and back buttons it has are used very naturally to move the mouse cursor on the desktop and act as a mouse). I do not use it daily but whenever i want to go somewhere briefly and need a PC (e.g. i need to show a project of mine to someone), i pick that up instead of my laptop: it is much lighter (its weight barely registers), it fits in my fanny bag next to my smartphone and provides pretty much the same functionality as a regular laptop - it is just weaker and slightly more awkward to type on. But i'm not going to write code for hours straight on it anyway, so it doesn't matter. However i do use the keyboard frequently, for command line or shortcuts or whatever, and it is miles better than something like Termux and/or the virtual touchscreen keyboards you'd find in smartphones (which with swipe typing are decent but fail at everything else).
The main issue with the linked PC is that it is ARM instead of x86 which IMO limits its utility. I can run any old application on my GPD Win 1 and for my own applications i can just copy the binaries to it directly but for something like the MNT Pocket i'd need to cross compile just for it and it is limited to stuff that i can do that.
I think you're being extremely vague about the things you are using your GDP for. Nothing you've written strikes me as something that couldn't be achieved with a proper I/O module attached to a smartphone.
I could actually work on it. Good luck getting any reasonable IDE experience, a compiler, a debugger, etc working on Android or iOS. Real image editing, the Godot editor, Blender, web dev tools, LMMS, etc.
The most limiting bit about phones is the OS itself. You could hypothetically get most of these things working on phone OSes, but only for a massive amount of effort to port something for a single-digit number of users. I don't even know how you'd get a compiler going, but I suspect it would be a non-starter on iOS.
> Smartphones have their on OSes, UX, applications, etc. The point of projects like GPD Win or the one linked above is to run the same programs, OS, etc as you'd run on a regular laptop or a desktop PC.
Sure, an Android device could probably be hacked to do that. But most Android devices are usually locked-down, whereas the GDP & friends make it a point to be open.
I guess we should probably push for more openness from smartphone vendors (including Apple) instead of having yet another different device. Especially since now everything and the kitchen sink connects via USB-C. I'd absolutely love to be able to plug my phone in the USB-C dock at work instead of lugging around a laptop (which I use on top of a desk tethered to some fat screen and external keyboard like 99% of the time anyway).
At one point, I remember Samsung had something like that on their Galaxy line (DEX? can't remember the name). I was actually ready to pull the trigger on a tablet with that feature. Luckily, I found out they had just or were about to remove it.
DEX was and still is a thing. There newer were plans to remove it. The only thing that was abandoned was the full Ubuntu VM support. But majority of that capability can be replicated with termux
> Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote? How about XFCE? Or GNOME? No
Yes. After struggling with every single type of Smart TV platform (Google TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV). I settled for a Linux HTPC that I control with a Logitech K400. I finally found what I needed and I'm never going back to looking for crappy apps on some semi-empty store. Walled gardens are really sad.
You just need a remote with QWERTY and trackpad, and a few adjustments to the OS (e.g. 125% UI scaling works pretty well for me).
Sure, if you change your requirements and sidestep mine then everything becomes easy. Now try doing the same with an actual TV remote, which my question actually asked about.
Fair but the point is you are trying to solve the problem with the wrong tool.
GP adapted the the form factor to his needs.
The remote form factor was created for a long gone use case of 'zapping' through channels coming from an analog source.
Home theater nowadays has no similarity with the interface needs of cable/satellite TV, so why would you be hung up on using the same remote control interface?
Remote controls have been tortured into fitting smart TVs with ever more ridiculous tiny buttons and confusing silk labels the remote control concept needs to be retired anyway.
My point is that drastic I/O adaptation almost always require UI/UX adaptations, which doesn't happen with these enthusiast projects.
>Home theater nowadays has no similarity with the interface needs of cable/satellite TV, so why would you be hung up on using the same remote control interface?
Because that's what people use. If we went by some "blank slate" argument then we could make a ton of things possible, but that's not what this problem is about. Additionally, even if you had a keyboard+touchpad combo, would you rather use your TV from your couch with GNOME or XFCE or would you prefer Kodi's interface?
I use MATE. I'd like a better tv-tuner application, because that's a hole in FOSS, but I also can't stand the Kodi interface although I've have made many attempts to adopt it to my use case from back when it was XBMC. The Kodi interface is more annoying and difficult to navigate than a standard PC desktop with the font sizes bumped up used with remote keyboard/touchpad that is smaller than my remote.
Kodi is theoretically a better fit for the 10-foot display use case. It also has a bunch of features built in for dealing with video libraries, their management/filtering and so on that you won't get with a generic interface like the Gnome or KDE file browser.
Using Linux on a TV is not the same as using a TV as a general computing device. You still use it as a media consumption machine, and that's why you've been able to set it up accordingly. Now what if I asked you to set up your TV to do everything I do on my general purpose laptop or desktop computer? It would suck, plain and simple.
> Now what if I asked you to set up your TV to do everything I do on my general purpose laptop or desktop computer? It would suck, plain and simple.
I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make between having an Intel NUC on my desk connected to a monitor and a keyboard, or having one mounted to the back of my television (or monitor placed in the room as if it were a television), and controlling it with my remote keyboard. They're both general-purpose computers, they both do exactly the same thing, the TV runs Debian Stable and my PC runs Debian Testing.
Yes, this is true, point taken, I wouldn't try and use that TV to do work. But, as a streaming machine, it is really awesome, I get a level of flexibility that Apple/Google/Fire TV would never allow. But I agree with you, it's not going to replace my desktop or my laptop any time soon.
I have a Logitech Ksomething wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad, and a standard IR remote.
They cost about the same. Some machines come with IR receivers, some need them added on via USB. If you need one, I can highly recommend the FLIRC: https://flirc.tv/
I flip between the devices depending on what I'm doing. Mostly, it's the remote.
My whole family uses essentially a TV with GNOME running on an attached micropc. We use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Android-Gimibox-Wireless-Keyboard-Pro... Works like a Wiimote. We don't have to limit functionality, we just launch a web browser and have the streaming services on the bookmark toolbar. None of our visitors have ever had problems operating this system, even ones who have never heard of linux or GNOME or Wiimotes. You just flip the remote over to type text into the search box. When the keyboard side is "up," the motion pointer and the "bottom side" is disabled. Flip the remote and the keyboard is disabled and the motion control resumes. Intuitive as hell, works great.
My point is that minor adaptations can lead to surprisingly pleasant functionality. Past failures are not reasons to stop trying new things; they're reasons to try other new things.
Your set up works because you tailored both the hardware and the software to make up for the shortcomings of the devices. Normally a TV remote doesn't have a full fledged keyboard attached to it, so many applications become borderline unusable. What you did is enhance the inputs of your device and this opened up many more possibilities. You also tweaked the software from its ootb configuration to make operations smoother.
None of these devices attempt doing something similar. They offer less options than normal computers and their desktop is left unchanged.
Lastly, what you wrote actually proves my point. You are not using your linux system to do everything a computer does. Your set of functionalities is limited to media consumption and as such you just had to find a workaround for your use case. Could you browse (or even write) your emails on your TV? Sure, but you'd have to use a heavily customized UI and UX if you don't want people to squint their eyes and take ages to navigate everything. And who's going to write such a program? And what about all the other applications that we expect a complete system to have such as a general purpose web browser, a video player, a file browser, etc.? My whole point is that these "pocketable PCs" might be great for a subset of problems, but they have to be tailored for them. They are terrible general computing devices.
Yeah, we browse all the time on it. Especially IMDB. I'm not sure what part of "it works fine" is confusing you.
> None of these devices attempt doing something similar. They offer less options than normal computers and their desktop is left unchanged.
They have swappable SoCs at their cores, including available on-board FPGA, and the existing product ships a customized Sway UI by default. They are far more configurable than other laptops.
One person already modified her mainboard to include a different charging circuit and added an ergonomic keyboard. You have gone from pessimism to outright misinformation in pursuit of your argument. Ask yourself whether you're here to discuss the topic or just win internet debates.
> Smartphones have been "pocketable PCs" for more than a decade already, but are dumbed down because their inputs and outputs are limited.
Wrong. Smartphones are dumbed down because the manufacturers would greatly prefer that you not run any kind of software that they or their partners did not directly provide.
The iOS App Store would have been barer than a Soviet grocery store if iOS supported Flash.
The fact that a full computing device in your pocket cannot be used to build and deploy applications makes it not much more useful than a color PDA from 2005.
Well.. I mean, I've been using $100 PCs-on-a-stick for about a decade now, plugging them into hotel room TVs or my projector at home or wherever I go... just need a cheap wireless keyboard/trackpad. I use that for about half my home entertainment viewing as well. Definitely no need to strap hardware to my head to game/code/surf on a big screen with a tiny device.
Yes, and people brought their Machintoshes 512k to work with a bag. I sincerely don't understand how your PC-on-a-stick experience has any relation to what I was talking about. You have to connect it to a screen and bring your own peripherals. I don't believe that's what people think when they hear "pocketable PC".
For one, a PC on a stick is much lighter than a Macintosh 512k. And it has no CRT or hard drive that can be smashed during transport. You can slip it into a work backpack or briefcase - try doing that with the Macintosh.
You do have to bring your own peripherals, but being able to move your computer around previously set-up work points is already an improvement from not being able to carry it at all, or carrying around a laptop.
I used the Machintosh example because the use case you're talking about is a completely old fashioned way of intending "portable computing". Portable computing currently means being able to take your device out of your pocket and being able to use it on the go. The Intel stick certainly has its uses, but are unrelated from the topic at hand and strikes me as just an excuse to share something you do that you think is cool.
There's no reason the MNT Reform cannot be used both on the go and in a docking station.
The parent likes to use an "old fashioned" (I disagree with that judgement, but fine) paradigm of portability, so what? Does that make it a less valid choice? "Portable" is a generic term that's not reserved for discussions of any specific kind of portability, so why not coin/use a specific term for "fits in your pocket and is usable on the train" if you need one, rather than silently assume?
Do I understand you correctly that you plug the PC on a stick into the USB port of a TV which it then uses the TV as display and connects to a bluetooth keyboard? Could you give pointers to such devices and perhaos Linux distros that work on them?
This requires that you be connected to the same wifi network, right? That can be an issue if you’re at a hotel and don’t have another keyboard to connect to wifi with (plus hotel networks can interfere with this).
While it is possible to cram PC features into a pocket-able design. And other commenters here have given examples such as the old pocket pc standard. Its not very good and didn't stick around.
The user interface and format will in large part define the kind of work you will do on a device. Pocket sized devices suck for a lot of "real work" use cases because small and limited inputs combined with small screens don't make for a pleasurable or productive work experience.
Big displays and comfortable full sized keyboards are necessity.
There has been on and off talk about dock-able pocket sized devices that can transition between being mobile and being proper PCs with the use of a dock that expands its IO options. But the software has always seemed to be lacking there. Apps on my Pixel 5a sometimes get the screen orientation wrong. How can I trust them to seamlessly switch between a mobile and desktop experience and not freak out in the process?
>...AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard...
That sounds only slightly more dreadful than the touchscreen keyboard experience we have currently; I seem to be in a minority but proper tactile keyboards, even tiny ones, are worlds better IMO. The best phone I ever had for input was a Blackberry Bold 9700, and I miss that keyboard almost literally every single time I type something on my magic screen.
You'll be happy to know that the current trend is to combine AR/VR with a physical keyboard. The Quest has an option to bring your physical Bluetooth keyboard into VR -- it only supports a small subset of models right now, though.
> having AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard and touchpad by somehow analyzing our hand movements [...] only if ... fast and hold a decent battery
I have been there. Speed and battery do not seem to be much of a problem - even with the not-recentmost technology I use, there have been laptops which "do" and last less. While having a quite decent resolution, the displays do not replace the real world experience for offering virtual keyboards - better input systems must be adopted.
Mobile systems are not «"dumbed down"»: they have more frequently found leaner options depending on the main purpose of the device, but you do e.g. control Android with physical keyboards, complete with shortcuts and function keys.
>> Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote?
Yes. We've been doing it for years since we cut the cord from cable TV. We switched to a plain PC (Lennovo low end laptop for $200) running Ubuntu and use an Air Remote (combination mouse/keyboard) around $15 on Amazon and watch all content in Chrome. It's great! I can get a shell and change things if I want, ssh in from my office desktop, etc.
>I think the only way we could ever get a portable PC experience on the go is by having AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard and touchpad by somehow analyzing our hand movements on a hard surface in front of us.
Or you could buy a GPD Micro PC and save a lot of trouble. It's a full x86 laptop the size of a chunky smartphone, and it's totally practical to use it as a PC.
The HP Palmtop (200LX for life) was an entire 80186 PC with CGA graphics that fit in a pocket. In 2000. We can certainly do better than that now if we want to.
Maybe we can't? I have been wondering about that for quite some time now.
We have been talking about ubiquitous computing for a long time, but instead of doing that, it seems we have settled on using smartphones for everything, retiring specialized or underpowered devices in their favor, even if they are just 60% as good as their predecessors.
When a company tries to build something in this niche, it seems we need as much power as possible to make it potentially as mass appealing as possible, which in turn means tradeoffs in many other areas (size, heat, battery life, software etc.) that make it unappealing to most but a small minority.
Now, it would seem easy to create a specialized device by putting some constraints on it, right? Make a computer optimized for writers! Make one optimized for day planing! Make one that is not good for playing video or games but great for spreadsheets etc. These devices could excel at their given niche and give us back advantages like weeks long battery life or incredible small size etc. But it seems, no one is willing to work with these constraints. Of course, also no one seems to be capable to create custom software, which I guess these devices would also need to be good at what they were supposed to do.
Sometimes you find these things in small, specialized markets, but even then they always seem to be not really much better or even worse than what we had in the 90s. I am not sure if it is because of market dynamics or lack of vision, but all we ever seem to get are compromises.
In the 90s the market was new and fresh and nobody really knew what would sell, so people were gambling on many variations of product.
Now we know what sells, and it's an iPhone or an iPhone wannabe. Nobody wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars on something that isn't a phone, so nobody does the development to mass-produce these items.
Notice how phones were wildly insanely weird before the iPhone and very quickly afterwards they were all black slabs?
You'd probably have more luck cannibalizing the 200LX and shoving a phone inside it.
I just want a 200LX with a bit more RAM, wifi, and a new-ish CPU. As far as I'm concerned, it could run on a Raspberry 0 W. I haven't seen anything new with that Palmtop style of keyboard. It needs both good keys and a decent layout, but everything new I've seen seems to compromise on both.
Android phones have mostly been this for years. most of them don't have the physical keyboard built in obviously, but you can buy all sorts of different pocket-sized keyboards[1] that often include a touchpad, and can plug in via USB OTG (which can be a wireless receiver) or through bluetooth. Add an app like Termux and I could (if I had to) live on the thing.
> Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote?
Kinda, if the remote had a useable keyboard (I think some do).
Mostly I would like a universal search: to be able to type the name of a show, channel, or other media source and have all relevant apps or TV functions that can play it come up. Also it would be cool to enter something like "seek MM:SS" to tell the current media to go to that precise point, and universal commands across all players/apps would be pretty keen, like "captions off", "language XXXX", etc. Just need a TAB key for autocomplete.
Let me add this to my list - Has any of these made it ever into the hands of customers? I believe the only device that actually came out is the Cosmo Communicator (https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/cosmo-communicator)
If you look around Youtube and such, everyone seemed highly satisfied with it, but as a owner myself, it kinda sucked.
By the time it came out, it was underpowered, it never was able to run any decent web browser at an acceptable level. It's focus was gaming and emulation, but even then it wasn't any better than a modded PSP (I would say in terms of software, it was worse). My Pandora had numerous manufacturing defects and the way to resolve it was "post in the user forums" where people would reply "Don't worry about it, it's a purely open-sourced handheld! You could just 3D print a new L button!"
And what pissed me off to no end, people would overclock the CPU over 40% to get stuff to run at acceptable speeds, and then in the same breath say that "it's amazing, 10 hour battery!" Not if you overclock the thing.
I still get excited when I see these new ultra-portable computers, but then I remember the Pandora and quickly tell myself not to waste my money.
They larger laptop, MNT Reform, has been shipping for a while. Some friends of mine have it and I've met Lukas and played with a prototype at Fosdem long time ago. It is a real thing and it is a beauty. I'm saving for one.
It's too bad that it took a long time for linux support for the cosmo communicator to not be an absolute dog and good luck porting to anything other than their debian flavor. Also good luck finding replacement parts if anything breaks! That's the biggest problem IMO and one that I feel most happy with MNT, Pine64, and Purism (availability of replacement parts)
I can neither see clockwork's nor platecom's website -- they demand that I upgrade my Chrome browser (which I can't -- Chromebook Pixel here). Why would they restrict their market? Apple.com happily shows me their content ...
I've been hoping that the Lisperati becomes a real product soon. At least in kit form, since I'd rather have some of the kinks of sourcing and packing stuff into the case sorted for me.
Are there any devices that fit the bill of an "anti-laptop"? I despise working on tiny (<27") screens, but I often need to work both from home and from the office. Currently I have a docking station in each location and move a laptop between them. However, I never ever open the laptop or use it on battery power.
It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thunderbolt cable like a docked laptop can.
Does such a product exist? I understand that this is a small fraction of a fraction of a use case, and until recently connectivity options weren't really there to support such a device, but I think there is some promise in this idea.
The Framework desktop case seems to come the closest so far, but it still doesn't (I think?) address the single-cable connectivity question. There's not too much info about it on the website so I couldn't answer all my questions about it.
An NUC or similar SFF desktop PC seem to be pretty close to your requirements. Without an optical drive and without any spinning rust media, they're pretty durable. I use a lot of fanless PCs from OnLogic, Cincoze, and Neousys in industrial control panels...they have 'rugged' models that are designed to mount inside heavy equipment or prototype vehicles that you could probably use as a hammer, but even a consumer NUC will be fine in a backpack.
The form factor is typically more boxy, like 5x5x2" rather than 9x12x1", so they'll fit easily into a backpack but not so well in a briefcase. You can get them with laptop processors and passive cooling or the worst of both worlds - a whiny little centrifugal laptop fan, or you can get a luxuriously quiet 140mm desktop fan, desktop-grade processor and graphics that will blow any ultrabook out of the water.
However, they're not typically oriented for single-cable-connectivity. Why is it such a big deal to plug in one cable for the power supply and either a couple for the mouse, keyboard, and monitor, or one for the Thunderbolt hub?
I kinda think that the Steam Deck and the other new handheld gaming PCs are the new incarnation of the netbook. Powerful enough to be useful, with a usable screen, you just need a mouse and keyboard to do basic tasks. Plug in a monitor, you're all set.
I have a couple of the ThinkCentre Nano computers. They are tiny, a fat fit for a pocket, but easily transported if you wanted to. AMD Ryzen processor and plenty of ram with SSD.
Still need power though... and I am not crazy about the power connector though (seems too proprietary) but it seems very sturdy at least.
It's not a single-cable device, but it has a lot of ports. It runs a slow processor, has only 4G of RAM and 128G of storage...and reviews of previous generations have not been kind.
My personal tiny PC lust object is the Ockel Sirius A Pro:
It's six years old now?, and runs an Atom processor...and they're asking USD$800 for one, but it's got 8 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, and has a battery and 1080p touch display. Hopelessly underpowered and overpriced, I still desperately want one.
EDIT: Finally, there's the MeLE Quieter3Q, available on Amazon. See the reviews on YouTube.
> None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thunderbolt cable like a docked laptop can.
The Mac Mini is basically exactly this, with one exception, which is power. I really wish this existed as well. An M2 Mac Mini that supported being powered over TB with PD, would be perfect for me, because I have multiple work locations that each have monitors that provide 90W of PD power over TB, and I could simply drop it in my bag.
Again, not a single-cable system, but CappuccinoPC make a range of Mini-ITX, fanless, and other small-form-factor PCs and devices.
They're full-featured computers, they're portable. They typically have multiple connectors, however, and they don't have integrated battery storage, though that's something you might be able to add modularly at this point.
I see why this is tricky, because I'd argue a Mac Mini fulfils that requirement - but it doesn't do the power delivery aspect. If you ignore the power requirements it becomes much easier.
It'd be a small market for sure, which is why I don't think you see it. Personally I'd maybe grab a MacBook Air or something as that is likely the best
"power to weight" ratio for a laptop.
Your mention of the Framework desktop case seems like it would work no? As it can be powered over USB-C? Or does it not do output over the same port?
I've kicked around the idea for a while of a baggable computer, in the sense that the components might fit into a satchel or messenger bag, but be connectable to a larger set of I/O devices (keyboard, mouse, display) as needed.
For the past year and a half I've been using the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi e-ink tablet. It's sized large enough at 13" to be a very useful display. As an Android device, it ... suffers many of the limitations of same (see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32569871>).
But paired with a Real Computer, a keyboard, and a mouse or trackball, plus battery/power supply and maybe external disk storage ... it could be interesting. Those might fit into different pockets of a bag, though this would leave the problem of thermal management (cloth-swathed electronics have poor heat conduction characteristics).
Different components could be swapped out at will. And the device (or its storage) could be paired with a Real Desktop Computer (or work-in-process synched to same or some common storage pool) as needed.
The key constraints for a laptop itself are the fact that the keyboard and screen must accommodate a human's hands and eyes, and provisioning sufficient battery capacity. Busting a few of those constraints for more flexible offerings ... might shake up the concept a bit.
For modern generative computing, web browsing is typically the biggest load. I've used 10--15 y.o. (or older) hardware quite usefully for most of my principle tasks except Web access, which ... is kind of sad on the face of it. Even an older Android tablet runs scripts (generally awk or python) reasonably well. Runtime is about 1/10 the performance of a desktop, possibly worse, but for small working data sets, that's rarely an issue. E.g., I can run awk with effectively the same responsiveness on many thousands of rows of data in either environment. I did find that JSON parsing was notably slower (10--15s on the tablet vs. sub-second response on desktop) for typical workloads, though even that was an issue only in high-repetition development or content-search contexts.
There are docks that let you use your phone as the computing device. Depending on how much power you need, that would probably be good enough for most tasks.
My million dollar idea is that I take my keyboard with me. My preferred layout, keycaps, switches, etc. Inside is something like a Ryzen APU, upgradeable / swappable, with an internal battery. It has display outputs and can easily be paired to a tablet or phone for display, perhaps wirelessly, possibly harnessing the display device's processing power as well.
People that want this are buying M1 macbooks with broken screens on ebay and simply removing the screen. I'm not sure you could really do this without the battery to make a much smaller size as modern laptops rely on the battery for peak power delivery instead of using a larger power supply.
I love seeing these projects but can't imagine what in the world I'd do with one of these devices. Small computers that don't benefit from the mobile UX tradeoffs and don't quite have keyboards or screens or a hinge to support putting it down and typing on it.
They're cute though. If you had one, what would you be doing with it?
I have an ancient Atari Portfolio in daily use and because its the same form factor perhaps i can contribute my 2 eurocents:
As others already put it, the form factor is great for working on public transportation. No need to somehow wriggle out your laptop but simply slide this mini-laptop from your bag and start working.
A small keyboard is something one needs to get accustomed to, but after years now i can sincerely say that i type nearly as fast on the Portfolio as on a regular sized keyboard... and i would assume, that this new computer would have a much better keyboard than the old Portfolio.
Ok, now on the topic "what to do with this device": I mainly use the Portfolio for notes during meetings, hacking together a few figures in the spreadsheet app (something that is just plain uggly on an smartphone) and as a knowledge database for my daily work (e.g. MAC-adresses and so on).
One thing i have not found in any modern computer is the battery-liftime of the Folio: Nearly a month on three AAAs!
Until the hardware totally gave out, I used a Sony Vaio P which is of similar size, but had a keyboard usable by a human being. I loved the thing as just a terminal on the go, if I had ever repaired the 3G modem it would have been literally perfect. Sadly the hardware is miserably old now and nobody has many anything like a replacement with a keyboard that doesn’t have its own stress injuries named after it.
I've seen good hardware level network engineers using small form factor portables as isolated "known setup" units for running packet filters, malware scans, diagnostic scripts etc against racked units in situ.
I was troubleshooting a very irregular network interruption between two industrial controllers (AB PLC and a DCS). For those who do not work in industrial automation communication between assets is essential and some disruptions can be quite costly depending on the industry/product being made. That can be true of even relatively minimal disruptions.
I loaded up an RPi with arch, popped a thumb drive on there and created some startup scripts. Once the RPi booted up it just performed a rolling packet monitor. Once I was alerted about a disruption I went and grabbed the thumb drive. I found a Modbus TCP driver bug.
What’s even better is I ended up ‘packaging’ it in an enclosure and was able to utilize it in a lot of scenarios. I’ve been using it over the past 2 years.
Edit: in the industrial world equipment like this is not in racks/server rooms. They are usually located in panels that have no external networking (security). When I ‘grabbed’ that means traveling to the site and literally taking the drive.
> Edit: in the industrial world equipment like this is not in racks/server rooms.
A rack by any other name . . . :-)
TBH I was thinking of not just the trad. IT server room racks but also of cramped radio comms "cupboards" by towers and of production circuit | industrial control access panels / locations in both indoor "warehouse" production and outdoor mineral processing circuits ..
Always handy to have a small known general purpose computer with ports, scripts, utilities, etc when you're tracking down the weird bug of the day.
I’ve been meaning to get a flipper zero, but I would love to see that device with a standard gig Ethernet port. The flexibility would be amazing. PoE for bonus points.
However, for ultimate utility I think the next iteration of my packet scraper will be a dual NIC’d SBC so I don’t have to worry about hubs or ‘managed’ switches with port mirroring.
NanoPi R4S is nice and might be of interest to you. The RK3399/OP1 chipset seems well supported by mainline. Only potential drawback is the second GbE LAN is connected using USB3.0 internally on the mainboard. IIRC the XHCI protocol fixes the EHCI (USB2.0) CPU usage polling problem, and the interface can indeed reach close to line speed.
Yeah, there was a device mentioned on HN recently, the GPD MicroPC, which is a palmtop with loads of ports (serial, RJ45, USB A and C, HDMI); it looks neat. I have no use for it but it's a neat gimmick: https://gpd.hk/gpdmicropc
when traveling i want something small and portable that does not get in the way, especially when backpacking. sure, you could argue that i should leave electronic devices at home and unhook from this dependency to be connected, but that would remove the ability to back up my photos, or write a diary too. there is a case for the responsible use of electronic devices outdoors. and for that i like that device to be as small as is practically useful. a phone is to small because a touchscreen is just not good for typing. it would take me longer, so i would actually spend more time on the device than otherwise.
my first was the transmeta based sony picturebook. since then i have had various other devices of similar size. the largest was probably the OLPC XO. the small but sturdy form means that they pack easily. i just toss it in the bag, not worrying much. with any larger laptop the problem is either weight, or it's so thin that i fear it could break if i don't protect it from things that might push against it.
the small form factor helps to reduce the amount of time i like to spend in front of it. so i really just use it for things i need to do when not at home or in the office.
the downside is that these devices are actually rather expensive, but for me they were what enabled me to be a digital nomad for a several years.
The Sony Z4 tablet with keyboard dock is great. I've fixed mine several times to keep it going. The dock is a hard plastic laptop-style affair that is perfect to use on a lap. The tablet itself is much thinner than current ipads and waterproof.
It's sad that this was the last tablet Sony ever made.
Part of why I bought a Pinebook was to be able to back up photos and browse hotel reservations, flights, etc on the go without having to spring for an extremely expensive Macbook Air. I hate doing this on a smartphone, it's just too small and error-prone to be effective.
In the end, I found it's slightly too bulky with a 10kg luggage allowance. But if it weren't for that, I think it would be a frequent travel companion for trips abroad.
That's what I'd imagine too, but thinking it through... the keyboard on this thing is super lame. The lack of a Delete key alone would piss me off if trying to do any real writing.
I don't see a "travel" use case that couldn't be served by a MacBook Air (with the Karabiner utility to fix ITS insufferable lack of a Delete key).
To me this thing is for very limited technical scenarios, for example as a video signal generator or some kind of analysis or testing device to be used in the field. It might be pretty cool for something like that. Or for mobile hacking.
That's great if you backpack. I don't backpack. Devices like this appeals for the many situations where I'll have a jacket but don't want to take a backpack.
I remember looking forward to getting a Pandora[0], eventually I gave up on what are gimmick devices, most of them only sell a couple of hundreds, are yet another form factor to run MAME, and are gone afterwards just like several 8 and 16 bit devices that hardly anyone remembers.
Especially now. When the original pandora came out, the market was different and even after the years it was delayed it was still a great machine for emulation.
But now, cheap and semi-open emulation devices exist in the dozens and paying up to 10 times as much just to get linux and a keyboard is not that appealing to many people.
If they could do it for maybe <300, I think there would certainly be people considering it, but at that price (and of course the fact that it seems to never get finished) I am not sure they can rally a great community again like they could with the original device.
A community wanting such a device would maybe be better of producing a keyboard/gamepad accessory for existing hardware and hacking free software for same. The rockchip based platforms seem like a good target for example.
The picture makes it look like it has a keyboard, a screen, and a hinge to support putting it down and typing on it.
My imagined use of such a device is something like this.
I board the bus and there's, fortunately, a seat. I sit down, but a full-sized laptop wouldn't fit between my lap and the seat in front of me. I pull out the computer and finish up typing my notes about electrostatically-driven hydrogen–boron fusion, perhaps switching back and forth between Emacs and Jupyter as I do some calculations that go slightly beyond the back of the envelope.
Then I switch to an OpenStreetMap viewer to confirm where to transfer to a different bus (though the Pocket Reform evidently doesn't have built-in GPS, I can read a map), and check my address book to make sure I know the address where I'm going. Because the disk is encrypted with a strong passphrase, I know that my address book won't fall into the wrong hands even if the computer gets stolen, unless the thieves have video of me entering the passphrase.
I'm arriving early, so when I get off the bus at the transfer point, I stop at a café, sit down at a table inside (out of reach of motorcycle thieves), buy a cappuccino, and bang out a couple of pages of a story I've been thinking about. Probably a first draft I'll totally rewrite, but I have to get through the first draft before I can write something worth reading. For background information for the story, I refer to the copy of Wikipedia in the computer's local copy, using Kiwix.
Then a cool idea about cellular automata occurs to me, so I try it out in JS using Emacs and Firefox, then commit it to Git. I can't remember how to draw circles on a <canvas> so I consult a locally stored snapshot of MDN using Zeal. (If that had failed, I'd've used a locally stored snapshot of Stack Overflow using Kiwix.)
I pay for my coffee, stick the computer back in my pocket, and continue on to my landlord's house, where I pay him the rent.
Then I take another bus to the university; on the bus I use the computer to review the textbook chapter the professor will be teaching today. The desks in the classroom are too small for a full-sized laptop, but the computer fits on one of them neatly. I use it to compute eigenvalues for some of the matrices the professor writes on the board in order to test a hunch I have about them.
After class, I'm chatting with another student, and they mention they're interested in learning assembly language. I pull out the computer and open up a web server I wrote in assembly a few years ago; it's small enough that I can scroll through the code in Emacs while holding it in one hand, so we don't need to sit down.
On the bus home I use it as a music player, playing through my headphones.
At home I charge it and connect to the Wi-Fi in my house and do an incremental backup of the machine to my home server, which is a Raspberry Pi Zero with a USB disk plugged into it. That way, if the Pocket Reform does get stolen, I can restore the full system state onto a new one.
The next morning I see that my web server has a problem. I suspect that disabling Markdown on comments will solve the problem, but I want to make sure they don't look too broken before I push the config live. So I test the config change in a "staging server" that's really just a QEMU virtual machine running on the Pocket Reform. It turns out that it doesn't fix the problem. Once I figure out what does, and test it in QEMU, I push the config change live. (I'm testing in QEMU instead of Docker because the server is an amd64 box.)
Now I want to go visit a sort of Fab Lab that a friend of mine is setting up in the suburbs. So I consult the bus routes on the computer, stick it in my pocket, and go outside to wait for the bus. Once I'm on the bus, I open up OpenSCAD to put the finishing touches on a mechanical-computing lookup table design I'll try to 3-D print at my destination. It looks wrong, so I run git diff, which shows me that I have a forgotten uncommitted change from six months ago that is fucking it up. git checkout multlut.scad solves the problem, and by the time I get off the bus I have an STL file on my MicroSD card ready for him to slice.
While I'm there, I show him a Xyce simulation of a power supply circuit I've been working on, and he shows me that my circuit is too sensitive to noise in a way I hadn't thought to simulate.
At night I have a date. We end up talking about oral sex technique, and I mention an instructional video I'd seen that showed me some interesting techniques; later at home I show the relevant part of the video.
Throughout all this I never transmitted an IMEI to a cellphone network, and I only ever transmitted a randomized Wi-Fi MAC address, and that only when I was at home. I never sent my data to a data center in the United States, China, or South Korea. I never had to overcome artificial obstacles to installing my own software — or hardware. I was never at risk of not being able to install OpenSCAD because it had been removed from the app store because it hadn't been updated in three years. I never had to deal with any malware, spyware, adware, or antifeatures. None of my files were ever matched against a secret government blacklist of forbidden files. The page numbers I looked at in my textbook were never transmitted to Seattle. I never had to do a CAPTCHA to keep my computations from being aborted. No advertisements interrupted the oral sex video, and because it is stored locally, there's no risk that it will have been deleted from the server because of a DMCA notification.
Still, I think it would be better with a camera (with an obvious hardware power switch which activates a camera app when it's turned on) and GPS.
the issue with using a laptop in public transportation is that sometimes i notice to late when i need to get off. then i have to rush, and in that situation a small device is easier to handle. the OLPC XO was really the best in that case because of its handle. i could just grab it and run.
A killer feature for me would be a control that helps my device switch contexts.
I fiddle with about 5+ settings whenever I prepare to leave home, board the bus, or disembark at my destination. That includes toggling WiFi or finding an SSID nearby, toggling mobile data, Bluetooth, battery saver/brightness, DND/ringer, etc.
Why does a general-purpose smartphone force me to manually press all these buttons in a checklist sequence that's easily forgotten? Why can't I just configure one green button that says "Leaving home" and it executes all those settings on my behalf? Another red button that says "Arrive at church" and it goes silent/off-net/DND?
And why, when I turn the phone's power off and back on, it restarts with all the same settings even if I've switched contexts? If I shut down a noisy connected phone, I can't turn it on at church because it'll gratuitously probe the network, use mobile data, chirp with texts and calendar reminders.
So even better than those aforementioned buttons would be geofencing, that allows me to configure where DND/ringer is on, where BT, WiFi and mobile data are allowed, etc.
If a device is going to feature dozens or hundreds of fiddly gadget preferences, please allow users to create "big knobs" or scriptable actions to simplify them!
I wonder if you can write an app to do this for Android, or if there are API limitations. Obviously hardware buttons for different contexts would be better than something in the pulldown buttonbar, or even better, a hardware knob, with detents.
Geofencing and time-of-day auto-profile-switching have the potential problem that they fight with your manual configuration. You turn on notifications to make sure you don't miss news from the hospital about your wife, and then an hour later the geofence turns them back off. That sort of thing has a kind of irreducible complexity and potential for user error.
Yeah, that's true. Also, pulling out a laptop attracts attention. I wonder if you could chain it to your belt like some people do with their wallets; then you couldn't forget it.
A detachable DOCK with keyboard, additional battery, 3 or 4 USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI, SD socket(s), headphones socket, etc., which can be attached to any smartphone via something like VESA mount for displays and TV-s. To use the keyboard, I prefer just slide it, to use like a notebook, out OR rotate it and the phone to form a cross, to use it like a portable gaming console.
This way, I can select a phone with good specs, then install LineAge with Linux terminal, and use the phone as a PC for development, note-taking, texting, etc.
a keyboard large enough to type on it with two hands (even if not using all 10 fingers) and a screen no larger than the keyboard. (no touchpad. it takes up way to much space for little gain), 4-8GB of ram and not to much diskpace. (lot's of diskspace takes more effort to back up)
If the keyboard on this is 7 "inches" wide, that's 14.8 mm per key. I think 14 mm wide would be enough, so this is probably wide enough to type on with two hands. But by the same token, it's probably too big to fit comfortably in most pockets.
the GPD pocket is 6.5 inch wide, with 16mm per key. and it does fit into some of my pants pockets. but that's actually not a criteria for me. i rather carry it in a shoulder bag or backpack anyways.
Early 2000's (2002?) there was a pocket PDA device that ran linux and had a workable keyboard - the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D (developer edition). 32 Mb RAM! Had a JVM installed. Got mine at Java One with a Linksys 802.11b Network Card. Fun (at the time) to boot up linux and SSH into my servers.
Processor: StrongARM (206 MHz 32-bit SA-1110)
Operating System: Linux 2.4 (Embedix)
Memory: 32 MB SDRAM, 16 MB Flash ROM,
Display: 3.5in 240 x 320 pixel, Color Reflective TFT LCD, 16 bits (65,536 colors)
Power: Removable, rechargeable 3.7V Lithium-Ion battery pack, Built-in 3.0V back-up battery, 5.0V AC adapter
Communications: USB Docking Station, IrDA infrared port
Expansion slot: One CompactFlash Type I / Type II slot, One Secure Digital slot
Audio: Stereo headphone jack
Size: 2.90 x 5.40 x 0.80in. (74 x 138 x 21mm)
Weight: 7.3 oz (206g)
I had one as well. I even installed gcc on the device. No camera but who cares, right? It didn’t need video conferencing as it could do irc with any number of clients. It even had centerim .
It became openzaurus then openembedded and is still alive. Work around to install Wikipedia on an SD card and gutenbrowser make it ver useful except for the 2-3 hour battery life.
I think it is because we require heave duty web browsers needing 8gb of ram, we’ll never return to the pda sized computer days
Wow, didn't know it was still alive (in one form or another). I remember getting gcc running and installing busy box. It became something of a challenge to see what you could install and run on this tiny machine.
Here's a page detailing what the PC actually does. Notably it does have an ethernet jack which I couldn't tell from the pictures which is important given people who plug laptops into racks are going to be among the only people who will buy these.
I don't mean to completely discredit your sentiment.
However, I'm making this comment on an MNT Reform. It has served wonderfully as my only laptop for the last year. I'd love to know about equally successful laptops that actually shipped, combining the same set of ideals that were important to me: Open hardware (to a further extent than something like Framework) & tough build quality.
When will I finally live a life where my work iPhone is plugged into a USB4 dock with mouse, display and keyboard and it makes my whole work desktop? M2 is already here, why can't we do this?
Since none of the other comments currently suggest it, the PinePhone can currently do this!
I got the PinePhone to evaluate if it could be used as a daily phone. It cannot, it is way too early for that. But as a portable laptop? Works excellent! Not for programming big programs, but it's surprisingly effective as a terminal-on-the-go and even vim is not that difficult to use with it.
Then when I come home, I can plug it into my display+mouse+keyboard and use a normal laptop to finish off whatever I wanted, push it to my git repository and then continue from my proper desktop machine.
Another not as portable setup is the Steam Deck. Ships with a proper linux distribution and works with the same docking stuff you have for the PinePhone, so basically connect a hub that has HDMI+USB and you're up and running with a proper Linux distribution, and with better heat dissipation than the PinePhone. Not as portable obviously, but more powerful than the phone.
Both setups are pretty open, as both of them can run basically the same operating system you use on a desktop computer (non-macos obviously, and no Windows on the PinePhone)
I use my Pinebook as an on-the-go dumb SSH/web terminal with some offline text processing functionality. It's got extremely weak hardware that makes it unusable for anything else, but then, that's exactly the tasks I need to do on the go so I'm happy enough with it.
To be fair, I owned the Atrix (or I should say four of them) and it’s build quality was absolute garbage. The fingerprint sensor on the back, when touched, would cause the touchscreen on the front of the phone to glitch out. I had exchanged several of them and all had this issue. Oh and after a very short bit Motorola said they won’t support any more upgrades to it with new Android versions and you couldn’t install anything open source on it either as the bootloader was locked. This phone is why I’ve been using iPhones since.
Heat dissipation mostly, phones aren’t designed to shed wall powered thermals.
You can do this today with an iPad Pro with keyboard cover.
Also, pretty much nobody wants this. Most people who use work computers have them provided by the workplace. The workplace does not want the employee phones running the call center apps with customer data, etc.
I for one do not want any work data physically present on any personally-owned device.
You could do this on a work provided phone, so the data could be managed the same way they do on a PC. Also, BYOD is still a thing, so there's that.
Regarding heat dissipation, you have a point. But I think it depends on the use case, which is the reason why we also have laptops going from paper-thin under-powered models all the way to models requiring a forklift to move around.
I think many "office jobs" could be done within the dissipation capabilities of a smartphone. Most of my days are spent answering emails and typing away in a terminal over SSH. My geriatric iPhone 7 could probably handle that without issue.
Secure BYOD is mostly unsolved wrt most common/popular Android phones. (Windows is also “a thing” but that didn’t stop Maersk or whoever from getting ransomwared, did it?)
Most serious orgs prohibit BYOD unless you are on Pixel or iPhone where MDM can actually work securely. There is no meaningful way to secure corporate data on an employee-owned Galaxy, for example.
It is the rare corp that can do BYOD securely. The best practice is issuing corporate iPhones to all staff with universal MDM and keeping all corp data physically separate from personal devices.
This also saves your employees’ nudes in a subpoena/discovery situation during a civil action against the corp, which is all too common.
I don't know about Samsung, but even some random Chinese smartphones pass the MDM checks these days. I had Unihertz Atom XL as my BYOD work device for quite a while with no issues.
I hear you, but ubiquitous "phone booths" where you can have a quiet call or type up an email with a physical keyboard and large screen would be amazing.
Don't let the decline of the telephone system fool you, when phones booths were widely used they were not disgusting toilets that you found in the late 90s-early-00s.
Steam Deck is perfectly fine mini PC that is reasonably portable it is also a decent console. If You will but 20-30 USD dock that has more than 1 output you can plug power, monitor and mouse/keyboard combo.
You can go with portable mouse/keyboard and dock/usb-c-hdmi cable to any place and plug it into a hotel TV and be setup on your portable linux machine that can also...game :)
Could it handle one of those one-wire-to-rule-them-all USB-C docks? I was contemplating this for my gaming needs so I could retire my big-ass desktop. But since I only play at home, and already have the desktop, I figured I wouldn't bother.
But I hadn't thought of this use case, so if it could handle it, it would be a game-changer.
Can it? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Is it (on average) good? YMMV.
Things to be weary of:
1. Valve took the same tradeoff Nintendo took with a Switch. As a result, driving higher res displays (4k) works until it fails, badly. The increased processor / memory strain finds lots crashing edge cases.
2. Dock / un-dock has the standard set of headaches, the most annoying which is random pieces of software fixating on hardware that no longer exists when you un-dock (resolution changes, keyboard vs. on-screen, fallback to trackpads from missing mouse, ghost ethernet connections, sound headaches). This is endemic on the games side; random game + its proton shim + SteamOS doesn't like inputs changing. You will occasionally need a full reboot to fix issues.
3. It's a Linux. Torvalds is right then Valve is the best hope of "Linux on the Desktop" but the current frankensystem isn't there yet, and using any ports (or bluetooth) will expose you to a lack of friendliness not found on consoles or even (eww) Windows.
It does. I got the USB-C dock/hub for PinePhone when I bought the phone, and it works perfectly well for Steam Deck as well. It cost something like $30 and I'm sure it works with other docks/hubs as well, in addition to the official one that will come soon according to Valve.
i have "reinston" dock that is more less noname usb-c to 2 x USB, 2 x USB-c and sd/tf card reader + ofc HDMI plug. So I'm kinda just plugging everything in and surprise it works.
My dock is more less a "no name" picked in store to try it out.
Also it has option to stream games rendered from your PC so you can play titles like CP2077 on steam deck rendered from your desktop if you feels so.
MNT makes some pretty cool devices. I follow them pretty closely.
This pocket reform is in the R&D stage, the photo in the article is a preliminary render.
They're expensive though. The current reform laptop is fantastic but its a thousand dollars thereabouts. The pocket reform will probably be close to that in price, at the very least not comparable in price for the specs, but with open hardware. If that's worth it to you.
The good thing I'd they're open hardware, you can download all schematics and fabricate them yourself if you want to.
@mntmn@mastodon.social for those of you that want updates from the horse's mouth.
What stops them from reducing the huge bezels and fitting an 8" or even 9" display in there? Is it just that 7" displays are far more common and thus cheaper?
I think it's because this form factor can be 3D printed; smaller bezels and you need more specialist design and materials that can't easily be reproduced and need to be built in minimum size batches in factories.
MNT's production runs are not big enough to drive novel display formats. They use off-the-shelf displays. Their other laptop, the Reform, has a list of about four models of LCD that will work.
I tried this form factor around 2011 during the netbook craze. It's pretty unusable. It was only convenient for Skype call when skype was still the go to video call application. Writing programs on it is unbearable. I am not sure about writers, maybe it's usable for them.
Even if you can't, it has 8000mAh total battery capacity there are plenty of 30,000mAh+ battery packs on Amazon. If you can really get 5 hours out of 8000mAh, relying on a battery pack for the instances where you expect there's a chance of spending 5 hours using it somewhere without a charger seems reasonable...
Most of those "30,000 mAh" battery packs on Amazon are actually 8000 mAh, as you can compute by dividing their volume by a trustworthy source of information about lithium-ion battery energy density like https://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/Sanyo%20NCR20700B.... That aside, in a lot of the situations where I'd like to use a portable computer, it would be very inconvenient, and sometimes dangerous, to have it cabled to an external battery pack.
The largest I have is currently is ~20,000 or so, and the weight is in well in line (~450g) and capacity seems to match well with what it's meant to be. One of the 30,000 mAh ones that shows up for me on Amazon even has a picture of it on scales with a big "Note: Bulky and a bit heavy" and showing a weight of 659g for the pack compared to 61.2g for the 4000mAh cells shown on the site you link. I don't doubt there are fakes out there, but so far I've not run into any.
But that's besides the point, really which is that you if it works for you - and it sounds like it doesn't for you (but it does for me) - then battery backs solves the capacity issue. Obviously if you can't or won't use battery packs then it won't.
For me battery packs is very much preferable to having the device itself be bigger and heavier, because it means I can adjust the bulk I carry with me depending on where I'm going.
I have some 400×240 memory-in-pixel LCDs here that are claimed to do 20 fps at 0.1 mW and some Ambiq Apollo3 subthreshold microcontrollers that are claimed to do 7 ARM MIPS (≈9 Dhrystone MIPS) at 0.2 mW, with the ability to run up to 96 MHz at proportionally higher power consumption. Two such displays would have more pixels than the original Macintosh, and one such microcontroller would have three times its RAM and ten times its CPU power, using 0.4 mW in total. Such a mobile workstation would take 8½ years to chew through 8000 mAh at 3.7 volts, though actually the battery's self-discharge would run it down sooner.
I'm working on a machine built around that hardware, called the Zorzpad, in a form factor similar to the Pocket Reform. My plan for the Zorzpad, though, is to have no battery at all, just solar panels. I think I can get a milliwatt from amorphous solar panels even under indoor lighting, and not having a battery should make the machine last a lot longer: no charging port to break, no battery wear, and no risk of battery fires or leakage.
But the laptop I'm typing this on is about 40'000 Dhrystone MIPS, so it's about 4000 times faster than the 0.4-mW configuration and 350 times faster than the maximum-speed configuration. I suspect the Pocket Reform is closer to my laptop in speed. The laptop has 24-bit color and 2 megapixels; the Zorzpad will have 0.1 megapixels. I think the Pocket Reform has 16-bit color and 1 megapixel.
You will never run Firefox on the Zorzpad, and probably almost no software I run on my laptop will run on the Zorzpad. Most of it will run on the Pocket Reform, but some of it might be slow.
A one-off custom build, but I'm planning to do the physical part with almost full automation, and of course I'll make all my files available under open-source licenses, so it'll be as easy as I can make it for other people to print their own. You might need Google Translate if you don't speak Spanish, though.
I used to have a VAIO P series laptop - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Vaio_P_series
It could just about fit in the back pocket of my jeans and had a sim card slot for mobile connectivity, if I remember correctly.
It was a really nice little laptop. Not going to be rendering any 3d models on it, but great for basic internet and office work.
Looks a lot like the original EeePC. I used one for a couple of years but there was no doubt it was cramped. I still have it and it works. My N900 was fun but didn’t last quite as long before a bit of flex killed the wireless radios. I replaced it with an iPhone 4S and haven’t looked back: I still use open source software every day but running on, or accessed by, (excellent) Apple hardware (the M1 MacBook Air and iPhone 13 mini are the best computers I’ve ever had).
I also have Eee netbook. It's so old that it's keyboard stopped working. I bought another keyboard from the same model but changing it didn't help. What do you mean with "flex killed"? Could the same happen to keyboard controller on my piece? Is it possible to fix it with simple soldering new solder?
Also I would like to buy this OP mini laptop for my six year daughter... I wonder when it will be ready for production... She might be 8 then. Maybe better Raspberry Pi 400 (but it needs external screen and that is a downturn)? What do you think?
I hate those square-grid-style keyboards. Not sure what they're called but I've had one before in a foldable keyboard. It always felt wrong.
I know the current layout was built for mechanical reasons so that typewriter rods wouldn't overlap. But 40 years of muscle memory is not something I want to give up :)
The layout is called "Ortholinear", it can be a pain but personally I find handy for lots of things where you don't have that muscle memory like keypads and other accessory input devices. Its frustrating how hard it is to find inexpensive keyboards using the layout, its uncommon so its understandable they cost more. Lately its been a bit of a niche in the customised mechanical keyboard market.
Normal staggered layout also matches that the operator's hands are at an angle to the keyboard in a normal position. It's an ergonomic version of the ortholinear layout lol.
I keep looking at similar devices. What I really want is a small lap top machine (but not necessarily a clamshell laptop) that I can keep by my couch.
My goal is to be able to write software when an idea pops in my head or ssh into my home gear. I just want an xterm w/ vim and a browser to look up docs.
I have a old 2012 HP Elite (?) laptop with a permanent powercord (battery died long ago) for this now, but it’s massive and overkill.
Out of my nerdiness, I’d like non-intel, but not required. Just something that can run Debian or Arch. I’d love FreeBSD, but never had a good portable experience with it.
Has anyone used a device this way and enjoyed it? I guess I’m weird that I want small and ergonomic, but not really “portable” in the traditional sense.
I think somewhere on the Pocket Reform site they describe it as a "sofa PC," more comfortable to use than a regular laptop, more capable than an Android phone running Termux.
I had an Averatec N1200, the smallest, lightest netbook made, and it ran OpenBSD without difficulty, so I'd recommend that over FreeBSD. I eventually gave it away because the Atom processor and two gigabytes of RAM and slow SSD became intolerably slow.
The keyboard was also very cramped, so while I still LOVE the idea of tiny PCs and netbooks, I'm not sure they can ever be comfortable enough to use.
An older xps-13 would be good. Available for under $200. Debian and Arch both install easily and work very well on it, with the exception that you might need to replace the wifi card.
With a little tuning you can easily get over 12 hours battery life.
everyone here missed the blackberry priv and key2 (not key2-le subversion).
they were android flagships with same cpu/memory as the samsung du jour. but with a keyboard that doubled as a touchpad. and no bloatware, pure android.
the key2 is only now being left out of security upgrades.
absolutely nobody here heard of them. coded on them regularly (keyboard only missed a esc and tab, but easily to work around as it had a ctrl key)
I'm sadly typing this on a samsung s-large-number. i hate every second of it and only scroll content. marketing is the intelectual class war we don't recognize.
The only bad thing is that it was such a comercial failure there's zero postmarketOS support.
Nokias were locked down more for necessity of the low hardware. Android and ios are locked down for no reason other than greed.
there's zero defensible reason for the smartphone of today to not be an open PC that you can install your opensource OS. and if you utter something like security i would like to ask that you don't interact with me. thank you.
How's the linux support? So many of these bargain laptops are listed as Windows devices. I still remember the days of the 'winmodems' so trusting that these devices can run linux well is a tough sell.
I've definitely browsed AliExpress in this category many times, but I expect the quality of these devices leaves something to be desired. And I say this as someone who pre-orderd the Popcorn PocketPC, and considering buying a Pinephone Pro with keyboard case.
What are the dimensions? Judging by the image, it is not much shorter than 13" laptop and a lot thicker. Those screen bezels make screen smartphone-sized.
What is the purpose of using it? Most X apps won't scale well to that DPI. Can't think of a use-case for it.
A small Powerbank could help in that case, if no power socket is available. But generally power sockets aren't far away from HDMI ports, at least in my experience.
This exists but is a lot of money for a bad computer. By comparison an intel NUC can actually be a decent computer at 4.6 x 4.41 x 2.01 inches. Why would you actually want this?
If it were to ship, the mobile data option is great - it could feasibly replace a phone. I've been running my phone with a data plan only, taking calls over voip, for the past 18 months, which has been working fine.
Can you type with your thumbs while holding the device, or is this the kind of mini-laptop that you have to set down on a table or your lap to type on?
Jeebz how much I waited for and longed for that machine (I have the wooden box, signed by EvilDragon [1] themselves), and then kind of forgot it in a wardrobe. It's weird, that tendency. :/
The Gemini is amazing except for the bit where I am stuck at Debian Stretch using libhybris for the hardware because of all the Android proprietary binary blobs.
It's super awesome, and OpenGL ES works great, but it's not following me into the future.
My Sony VGN-P720D was similar: amazing hardware with great Linux support out of the box, and ... the same Linux support 5 years later, because the blobs I got the month after I bought it were the last blobs they ever released.
Which blobs does it need? The Panfrost work means that ARM Mali GPUs should be supported in mainline Linux/mesa these days. Looks like mainline Linux has Mediatek MT6797 support (but not Gemini support) and mainline mesa Panfrost supports Mali-T880. So potentially doable.
I own a Cosmo. The keyboard is great. The software is atrocious, and Linux support can be best described as "it exists", last I tried it. From what I heard, Linux on Gemini is even worse, and there are no expectations for things to improve there.
On top of it, heavy users have discovered that the build quality isn't great, either - lots of complaints about broken screen cables etc.
The medium is the message, the form is the functionality.
Smartphones have been "pocketable PCs" for more than a decade already, but are dumbed down because their inputs and outputs are limited. You can't type effectively, your screen is small, your battery is limited. Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote? How about XFCE? Or GNOME? No, for a Smart TV we have purposefully made OSs that are limited in functionality such as Kodi, LibreELEC and others specifically because of the type of inputs and outputs needed.
I think the only way we could ever get a portable PC experience on the go is by having AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard and touchpad by somehow analyzing our hand movements on a hard surface in front of us. But that's only if we get to a point where said devices are fast and hold a decent battery, which, with current technology, is impossible.