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BBC:
An Android phone that slides open to reveal a physical qwerty keyboard inside has launched at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The F(x)tec Pro1 phone also has a bespoke shutter button on the side to click when taking photos.
The London start-up behind it said it wanted to "return the keyboard" to consumers.
Other handsets with keyboards built in, from brands such as BlackBerry Mobile and Swiss firm Punkt, were also on show.
"A lot of consumer tech still has buttons even though the tech is there to get rid of them," said Adrian Li Mow Ching, founder of F(x)tec.
"Haptic feedback never gives the same satisfaction as pressing a physical button.”
Hosannah!
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The Phone-Makers Bringing Buttons Back
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
The sooner our happiness together begins, the longer it will last.
-- Miramanee, "The Paradise Syndrome", stardate 4842.6
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:29AM (13 children)
Give me 9 keys please - big, knobby keys that can be distinguished by feel. No touch screen, no camera, no GPS, no blobs, no javascript, just a phone that works.
Nah, no one wants to make that anymore. Who needs things that work? Everyone needs a big unusable touch-screen that serves no purpose other than to display ads and break easily. That's so much more practical, right?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:50AM (2 children)
The Punkt phone mentioned is close to what you ask, not sure anything is going to be blob-free, though. Also quite expensive. There are lots of cheap, basic phones still around if that is what you want.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:29AM (1 child)
That being the case I just try to spend as little as possible on such dubious 'service' and to rely on it as little as possible as well. I'm sure my next phone will be a cheap feature phone. I've been looking but I still haven't found one that didn't appear to be designed as a demonstration of what not to do. I'm literally looking for something at least equivalent to the phone I was using about the turn of the century and there's nothing that even comes close on the market today. I find that quite sad.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @10:53AM
Just buy one of the Nokia retro models, those are feature phones and work as the Nokia phones used to, with a lot of attention to the UI based on button navigation, I just tried the banana on MWC and it felt good (I used to own the original) and was tempted to get one.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Nuke on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:52PM (5 children)
Google for "Feature Phones". Plenty like that, and the bonus is that they are cheap. OK, almost like that - they have at least 10 keys as there are 10 digits.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:39PM (3 children)
He said fucking 9!!! THERE ARE 9 DIGITS!!!! The zero is NOTHING! NOTGHING!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:20PM
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:11PM (1 child)
Really only 1 numbe and the absense of it, everything else is derivative.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:16PM
https://www.theonion.com/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no-keybo-1819594761 [theonion.com]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:15PM
Done that many times. So far they all either have insta-fail crappy keypads, or they're GSM phones. I have a great GSM phone, I just can't get service for it where I need it. There are GSM providers in the US still but they're very limited in coverage and haven't made any investments to expand it for many years, nor do I expect they ever will. Ergo those are out.
"they have at least 10 keys as there are 10 digits."
Yeah, no, 9 key systems have 12 keys typically, or more. I know it's confusing but that's how it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_%28predictive_text%29
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:48PM (1 child)
https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Jenny-T177-Unlocked-Dual-SIM/dp/B00OTZUDKO/ [amazon.com]
Too many buttons?
https://www.amazon.com/Nokia-TA-1037-Dual-Band-Unlocked-warranty/dp/B0757B64H2/ [amazon.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:06PM
Nope. They even appear to have *some* knobbiness, which is good.
Unfortunately these are both GSM phones. If I could get GSM service for that where I need it, I'd still be using my T200.
Great keys on that thing, btw. Could work it in the dark - or without taking my hand out of my pocket. Try answering a call from A and then sending a text to B on a "smart" phone without taking the phone out of your pocket and losing track of your surroundings, hah!
Apparently smart now means retarded.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:40PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:01PM
Keys are smooth, not raised, so that's an insta-fail. I mean seriously, that's 'missed more than a century of industrial design' level fail.
I see other criticisms but there's no reason to go on.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?