I miss my Moto Milestone 2.
Back then, there was at least a bit of variety in phones. Today they're all just rectangles.
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I miss my Moto Milestone 2.
Back then, there was at least a bit of variety in phones. Today they're all just rectangles.
We compensated it with stickers and cases, but that's not nearly as meaningful. If I kill my phone and get another one in a shop, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Maybe it's better for many in the end, but I love feel attached to my stuff.
We also compensated with a VASTLY more customizable software environment. With your Nokia you could maybe install a new icon pack and play with the theming and that was about it most of the time. A modern smartphone lets you turn it into a completely different thing than what came out of the box. Most people don't give a shit and don't delve too deep into customization because on a modern phone there are much more interesting things to do than change your ring tone for the 17th time that week.
With 6" edge to edge screens being standard now, a modern slide keyboard phone could make a laptop substitute. My eePC had a 7"screen.
This. I'd take this over a folding LCD.
Was just going to comment the same thing. If I'm going to have a phone that folds out into an alternative format, give me a damned physical keyboard!
My favourite is the Palm Treo
Edit: better pic here
i liked the motorola flipout design. the implementation was hot garbage, but it really felt like someone took a chance and went for it rather than following the trends
and of course the old nokia 6800 for ssh terminals on the road
Nokia N900 :(
I loved everything about that phone at the time (well, almost - that resistive touchscreen... :/)
A battery so easy to remove it literally flies out if you drop the phone 2 feet.
Original LG EnV was a boss. Stick phone that resembled a sleeker OG Nokia, but then clamshelled open to a 2nd screen flanked by speakers and a full keyboard on the other half. Loved that phone.
I liked my EnV2. Happened to line up with a great phase in my life as well. Took some of the best photos I've ever taken on its crappy little camera (singular) and it was a texting machine. No doom scrolling, that hadn't been invented yet.
My old LG. First smartphone I had. God, Android was an absolute disaster back then.
I miss my Danger Sidekicks the most! Had the original with the black and white display, the colour display one, and the Sidekick 2 in yellow. Good times!
Sidekicks were great. Flipping them open and close was cathartic. They also had a video out jack!
What a great fucking phone that was. And ahead of it's time.
My first smartphone before there was a thing. Could generate pdf invoices and basically run my business on it!
I desperately yearn for them to come back, but because fucking apple never made them and won't ever make them, it'll remain a "niche" for "uncool" people
Hell, even typing on a tiny Xperia Mini was a better experience for me than typing on any stupid glass screen. I also have a Blackberry 9800, fucker looks amazing and typing on it is great. A real shame it's "useless" for communication for me, no whatsapp, telegram or anything to bridge with them, afaik.
There is this new phone called Minimal, which has a physical keyboard (but also an e-ink display).
Looks really interesting and something I'd want to give a try, my phone is only ever used for messaging and writing notes, but I don't think it'd work with local cell frequencies here (Brazil), plus that price is a bit beyond my range.
side note: half the site being literally just the logo zooming in is the antithesis to being minimal and... well, just imagine an angry person cursing design choices.
I liked my droid.
At that time, those keys were way too small for using for anything important.
Nowadays people are using much smaller and harder to select keys for all important stuff...
If they made a new version if the sidekick with Android I would buy it in a heartbeat. Loved that phone.
My first phone was this “dual flip” Samsung U740 (I don’t remember the model number, I just looked up “dual flip”). It could be used like a normal phone when talking, but you could also open it sideways to text and use a QWERTY keyboard. I could easily text without looking, I loved it.
After that I had some moto droid with a slide out keyboard, but it was bigger and less comfortable to use.
Samsung Alias! Pretty cool idea. Not sure how great the execution was though. The Alias 2 that came after it had the same form factor but with e-ink keys
A big part of the problem was that the hardware on these was more often than not pretty terrible (slow, bad screens, poor antennae, physical construction was janky) and, if the hardware was okay, the software almost always sucked.
Windows Mobile was unpleasant to use up to WP7. Symbian was a pain in the ass to use that was only eclipsed by how much of a pain it was to develop for. RIM's classic pre-BB10 OS was at least nice to use, but it, too, was hard to write for and wasn't all that stable and, this is the important part, required a huge and costly server-side ecosystem to work well.
The genius of the iPhone wasn't the components or the capabilities, it was having a total package that wasn't utterly frustrating for everyone involved. BlackBerry 10 was close, and offered good physical keyboards, an OS that was nice to use and develop for, and hardware that was good, but by that point it was waaaaaay too late.
I had the Droid 2 back in the day, miss that keyboard for sure, it was also excellent for emulating Gameboy era games
I had a Backflip and I looooved it.
These were great when the other option was resistive touch screens. Can't say I see myself buying a phone with a keyboard nowadays with swipe texting being so good
They aren't good if you type a lot of unpredictable words, like me. 😑
I never have understood swipe texting. Apparently my phone is capable of it but I have no idea what it is.
You drag your fingers between the letters of a word and it spells it out when you let go. It's very fast
I LOVED my HTC Apache. I thought it running Windows CE was slick AF back in the day.
I didn't have money for one of these back in the day, but they look amazing. TOUCHSCREENS ARE TOO FRUSTRATING
Is this some QWERTY thing I'm just too T9 to understand?
I've been using an alternative keyboard called FlickBoard to have a more tolerable touchscreen experience since hardware keyboards are practically extinct. It's been a couple of weeks and I'm getting close to my previous typing speed with swiping or pecking on a touchscreen keyboard, with zero auto-correct errors.
Ahh the og droid, miss that sucker.
Two words: Palm Pre.
Yooooo
Anybody remember these?
Helio Ocean double slider is my favorite form, RIP
I miss my sidekick. It was the best feeling in the world when opening my keyboard to type.
I miss my Nokia E71.
Oh man, I had that Samsung on the right. Still the best typing experience I ever had on a phone.
I had the HTC Touch Pro 2 before I switched to the iPhone. What a piece of junk that was.