Handled terminals, phones with slide-out keyboards.

I've been really desperate to drop social media and anything phone related. I want to get some kind of handheld terminal/phone for note taking and hacking around with cli/tui tools. Been thinking about getting Clockworkpi's uConsole for awhile, but I'm skeptical of it. I want a device which supports nixos. And also if possible, has extension for a more reliable storage like solid state Options I have considered so far: uConsole Pros: - Widely adopted hardware, since it uses a cm4 from raspberry pi. - Has nixos support which was implemented by the community. - Great looks, rather cheap Cons: - It runs on an sd card, which might just get killed after a few years of use, since nixos is rather hard storage media. - People had to wait a year for theirs to arrive. - Kinda expensive Nokia n900 Pros: - Smol - Great battery life - Wide support for latest kernels from postmarketos Cons: - Hard to get hands on in my country - Keyboard might just be too small for my hands Any recommendations? (First post btw)

I'm too young to have firsthand experience with phones that had full keyboards but I always wonder how hard it is to type on them or if there's just a learning curve and after a week or two you can type on it fine. Do you have any experience with tiny keyboards OP? If I was going to tinker I would want a keyboard that's comfortable to use for long periods of time and thus just get a small laptop or a subnotebook. Is there a flip phone that's capable of doing video out like via MHL? I wonder how functional having a small terminal you plug a flip phone into to have a better screen and better keyboard would be. Any reason besides preference for not just going with a small laptop or subnotebook and if you had to have a phone for whatever reaason just using a burner flip phone?

>>87163 > I'm too young to have firsthand experience with phones that had full keyboards Same, my big brother had phones like that but I grew up when the touchscreens were starting to boom, so hence my first phone was a touchscreen. > always wonder how hard it is to type on them > Do you have any experience with tiny keyboards OP? I have no experience with these tiny keyboards. My worries also lay in this aspect too, I mostly journal with my desktop keyboard at around 120 wpm, so Idk how I'd like thumb typing. I would have already gotten a nokia n900 but when I realized how small it was i dropped the idea. > just get a small laptop or a subnotebook. > Any reason besides preference for not just going with a small laptop or subnotebook I have a librebooted t420, it's great and has a really good keyboard. But it's clunky and heavy. I want something portable. I used to take notes on it, but it's a whole ass ritual openin it up, entering my LUKS password then waiting for my bloated ass OS to boot up just to type two sentences. That's why I use connectbot on my phone to take notes over ssh. but touchscreen typing is disgusting, and it's really bad navigating neovim with it. I looked at some cheap ass notebooks/chromebooks but even the really small ones are bad. Their keyboards are really bad, all of em mostly have locked bios, and no linux support. > Is there a flip phone that's capable of doing video out like via MHL? I wonder how functional having a small terminal you plug a flip phone into to have a better screen and better keyboard would be. Ah yeah I've been here too. Samsung has great flipphones with good hardware, and I'm pretty sure you can just plug in a type-c dongle which has a HDMI output and an usb port. https://www.fonearena.com/samsung-g9198_7028.html All I've found but it's horrendously expensive.... Also a few notes from my website, https://4o1x5.dev/second-brain/flip-phones/ 280 usd with shipping looks promising with the uConsole but I need to do more research about it. I've been really wanting to improve on my writing skills and having something like this I feel like would have a positive impact. I could maybe use some straps or clamps so I could have it on my belt at all times. Accessibility is a must for me, because that's how I can really encourage my note-taking to happen more.

>>87164 T420 is a good sized laptop, many options smaller than it, even some 7" laptops but they all seem to be no name brands and I find their thickness to make them seem bigger than the nice slim ~10" models. I use a Lenovo Duet 3, not much thicker than a tablet and quite nice for portable. No idea if you can install Linux on it, I just use the Linux dev environment and find it nice to have ChromeOS for a few things.

>>87164 Cool website. Are netbooks completely off the table? I remember the HP mini netbooks like pic related and if you put a lightweight linux distro on one with an ssd I'd say it's fine for basic tasks. Though you'd probably have to worry about a locked bios with one of these and maybe need a usb wifi adapter if you can't put a good wifi card inside it.

>>87168 Most netbooks come with Atheros adapters with near perfect linux support, HP Mini's had the best netbook keyboard with the Acer Aspire One's being second best

I think you'll be kind of dissapointed, there really isn't any product that is an actually usable "mini computer" yet, of the product category for being really mobile. Ironically, a smartphone with termux logging into a cloud VPS comes pretty close imo. You can use it one-handed, and it's already waterproof and has cellular. By logging into a VPS you circumvent many local deficiencies. Android still has splitscreen, you just have to dig around a little to find it. One of these days I might get a foldable phone like a samsung fold to have this workflow with more screen space.

Writing this post from a new uConsole. Typing feels good for such a device, though shortcuts involving 3 or more buttons are barely usable and I also experience double presses and misses. I use pmOS with Plasma, and besides the SD card reading speed everything is smooth and as on both my desktops.

>>87422 Awesome. Glad it works how you prefer dude. After using it for a while please update the thread with a review. I think lots of lainons are curious about devices like that but can't just buy one to try it (see the debates in the lightphone thread)

>>87423 I've installed QMK firmware for the keyboard, it is somewhere on the forums. It has a gamepad mode and all the features of the stock one. Sometimes when I plug my Type C wall charger the screen goes black for a brief moment. The device is heavy and I would want to print lighter faceplates. The screws are short and loose, and the backplate has a gap because of it being secured with only 4 screws unlike the 6 screws on the faceplate. DIMM slot is fiddly and does not secure itself. Anyway, I like the device and the things I could do with it that a laptop would do while consuming a lot more volume and inventory management fatigue.