1 bookmark for 2023-06-04

277.

you probably don't need a linux phone with a hardware keyboard

astrra.space/home/blog/keyboards

however, after having access to all three for more than two months now, i've really struggled to find situations where having those phones (or some similar hardware with modern internals) was actually useful. i regularly found myself reaching for my smartphone after being tired of typing out a long message on the tiny hardware keys, my thumbs hurting from the amount of force i had to apply to press them. i typed slower (even though i was touch-typing), i had more typos, and the typing experience in general was just worse. not to mention that all of the 3 phones had very different keyboards with different key sizes, different actuation forces, and different layouts. they all sucked.

i think that trying to converge the laptop/desktop and the smartphone into one device is a bad idea. the two have very different use-cases, different ergonomics, and different security models. i think that the best way to go is to have a smartphone and a laptop, and use them both for what they're good at. i also think that more people should learn to write mobile apps, as most of my discussions on this topic have boiled down to "i want a linux phone because i can only write desktop apps", which is kinda sad in my opinion.