kamenladyFond memories
Admiral PatrickI blame Apple (and then Samsung for copying Apple) for stealing this form factor from us.
Didn’t have that one, but I did have the HTC TouchPro2 that came with Windows Mobile but was able to shoehorn a functional version of Android “Froyo” on it. Peak smartphone form factor limited by the technology of its time. Shame.
Yes the form factor was on point.
I also managed to put Gingerbread on both HTC Diamonds - not a real Rom. Iirc it was on top of Windows Mobile. So both were running in the background …
It’s been a while, but I think that’s mostly how mine worked. You had to launch it from within Windows Mobile, but after that, only Android was running the device. Android booted from the SD card and basically kicked Windows mobile out of memory and took over from there. AFAIK, WM wasn’t still in the background, at least on the Froyo build for it. I want to say that’s the case since the TP2 didn’t have much RAM, and Android ran way too well to be sharing memory with Windows Mobile lol.
Regardless, my interest in building and running custom ROMs was born the day I did that lol.
ah - yes this sounds more like it
I had completely forgotten about that aspect of it until you mentioned it lol. I just remember rarely seeing WM after getting that Android build on there.
DeebsterI had a “T-Mobile MDA Vario II” (HTC TyTN 300) which was similar, and also had a collapsible stylus which lived in a little hole on the bottom. It was Windows Mobile, but it was great having the keyboard fully accessible (without that extra bottom bit the G1 had).
It looked like this, just less German:
dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️My most fondly remembered phone is easily the Galaxy S Relay 4G I had for ages:
In its time, this motherfucker was pimp. It was essentially a Galaxy S5, but with a slightly smaller footprint and a sliding five row QWERTY keyboard – with arrow keys and dedicated number row. It was the bossest thing ever for remoting into systems via SSH or RDP to administer servers at work and so forth. It supported NFC, MHL video out, USB on the go (which was not necessarily a given at the time), and I wedged one of those wireless charging stickers into it under its battery cover. Of course it had a memory card slot, a headphone jack, and a swappable battery.
HeerlijkeDropand I wedged one of those wireless charging stickers under its battery cover
How did you connect it? Was it permamently connected to the microUSB?
From what I recall this model had some exposed test pads or something on the board under the cover that were connected to the USB port. The wireless charging adapter had a little pigtail that you kind of wedged in there on top of the pads and that did the trick.
I blame Apple (and then Samsung for copying Apple) for stealing this form factor from us.
Neither prevents other companies from making a phone with this form factor. It probably disappeared due to lack of market demand.
Technically true, and niche devices with QWERTY keyboard like the ones from PlanetCom still exist. But they don’t really benefit from economies of scale, are prohibitively expensive, and are usually at least a generation behind in hardware.
Plus Apple started, and Samsung joined, the “thinness wars” that got us to where we are today. Slide out keyboards were definitely a casualty of that, and I still hold some hope, albeit slim, that those could still make a comeback.
I had the Touch Pro 2 and loved it! Windows Mobile was a complete mess in the best possible way.
HTC tried to make it usable with their TouchFlo (I think that’s what it was called) skin, but once you veered out of that, it was a mess, yeah. lol.
Which is kind of sad because under the hood, it was pretty advanced for its time.
IndiBronyI had one of these! Qwerty keyboard on a phone is a thing I sorely miss.
Everyone seems to, except major phone manufacturers. 😡
Maybe someone could make a kickstarter
There have been plenty, some that have come to fruition. The first and only thing I have ever back was the planet computers “Astro Slide”, I will never participate in crowd funding again after that fucking shit show.
At the end of the day though they don’t usually attract enough backers to really make a decent product out if it, which is a shame.
Unihertz makes a couple of modern keyboard phones but none of them are sliders.
simpleI mean it sounds good on paper but who’s going to want to buy a phone that’s 2x thicker because it has a sliding keyboard? No doubt it’ll be really expensive to make too.
People who want a keyboard, that’s who.
I don’t get why people go around acting like these phones did not physically exist in the past in significant numbers, and both the “expense” and thickness problems were not, in fact, problems.
My old Galaxy S Relay 4G was not appreciably any thicker than my current phone is with its case on it. And the Blackberry Priv I had after that was still exactly as thin as current modern phones.
You’re comparing the market 10+ years ago to the market now… Your old phone was tiny compared to modern phones, which is a market that barely exists anymore because people prefer larger screens. It’s one thing for a smaller phone to have a sliding keyboard, but slapping one on an already big phone would make it heavier and clunkier to use. The fact that touch screens are way bigger means that using a touch screen keyboard is much easier than it used to be, making slide out keyboards unnecessary.
I don’t understand why every tech community acts like their niche opinions apply to the whole market. “Everyone wants small phones, we all want sliding keyboards, remember when operating systems were simple?” etc etc. I guarantee you if someone ACTUALLY made the type of phone you want it would barely sell and be seen as a gimmick.
Your old phone was tiny compared to modern phones
This seems to invalidate your statement about thickness being important, and total volume is about the same.
How? His phone was still thicker than phones now and that doesn’t have a cover.
The Priv wasn’t. Read the entire post. The Priv from Blackberry/TCL had a slider keyboard and altogether was 9.5mm thick. My current Moto G Power 5G is 8.5. An iPhone 16 is 8.25. This is not an appreciable difference.
Obviously there’s not any technical reason anyone couldn’t make a modern slider as thin as current slates, it’s just that with the discontinuation of the Priv nobody does. And that’s not even getting into fixed keyboard designs.
And imagine how much they sacrificed to make it 9.5mm. Not to mention that phone is an outlier (and the iphone 16 is actually 7.8mm). Priorities changed, phones now need more space for things like a bigger battery, better cameras, bigger heatsinks for faster performance and less throttling.
There are technical reasons. You can’t just put in a sliding keyboard on a modern phone and expect it to work the same. They’ll have to cut on so much to fit that without being too thick, and in the end you’ll end up with a phone that’s worse in every way and probably more expensive, for a feature so little people want.
What? I don’t have to “imagine” anything. I literally owned one, for two years. Nothing was “sacrificed” on the Priv. It was in all aspects a completely modern phone, even managing to include a headphone jack and memory card slot, a curved edge display, wireless charging, and a 3400 mAh battery. And don’t try to come at me about battery capacity, either. Just to name an example, its contemporary in the Galaxy S7 had a 3000 mAh battery, was the flagship phone of its time, and sold bucketloads of units.
Your argument is bullshit. Slider phones aren’t made because manufacturers don’t want to make them – be that for low projected sales reasons or whatever else – not because there is any physical reason they can’t.
This guy is making the same argument that people do when they claim it’s impossible to make a phone waterproof while also having a removable battery even though these phones already existed and it’s a super basic solution. It’s just ignorance and loud opinions all around.
“I don’t share your use case, therefore your preference is invalid and only mine is correct.”
Yeah, I know that one very well.
The D QuuuuuillI stopped buying keyboard phones when the manufacturers stopped selling them to me. They don’t actually care what the market demands, they care about what the market will accept with the highest profit margins. A mid-spec phone with a keyboard coming in under the price of a flagship should actually be a feasible product, but by creating that product, you’re reducing your profit/unit just that little bit…
helenslunchI don’t know how anyone used those things. I could never hit any specific key, I would push like 3 at a time. I was able to type much faster and more accurately just using T9.
cm0002Motorola Backflip FTW!
My first smartphone is HTC and it looked like yours, but with android.
That’s the first Android phone, the HTC Dream (or TMobile G1). I loved this phone, even if it was chronically underpowered.
The Nokia N900 was my fond memory. It ran a version of Linux, opening ‘terminal’ on my phone never got old.
I had one of those for a while. That was the best worst phone I ever owned. It was awesome at absolutely everything except being a phone…
I felt like I skipped this. People my age went to pagers, then sidekick phones, then touch screens.
I went from beeper, to flip phone, then palm pilot.
I must have had serious Wallstreet Stock Broker energy as a teenager.
I loved my G2.
It’s in my nightstand drawer now, plump from bad battery bloat. I ran it for 10 years as my bedside alarm clock. It ran a long gone app called NightClock.
bad battery bloat
We call that a “Spicy Pillow” sir
Not just the hardware. I far prefer icons from that time as well. I hate the modern trend of flat icons with no details. They look like someone mashed them out after 5 minutes in Krita and then drugged their management into believing that it was a recreation of the Mona Lisa.
The modern flat icons are actually… A little insidious in their conception. They’re based on industrial psychology and mid-century modern propaganda. They make your phone just that bit more addictive. It’s not someone convincing management it’s a recreation of the Mona Lisa, it’s management coming down to the graphics department and saying “You need to make it more addictive”
Early iOs and Android icons were one of the last offshoot of the style called “Frutiger Aero”
Flat icons don’t necessarily bad and undetailed, it’s just harder to create something more recogniseable with less tools, but I actually like the order, that they look like they are related to each other. Back in the day I created icon packs for the programs I used on pc, so my desktop would look clean and uniform.
Design styles are in a cycle, just wait some years and they will show up again, I’m sure. There is already some connection with the new style of windows 11.
Frutiger Aero
This article is part of a series on the Frutiger Family Frutiger Aero (also known as Web 2.0 Gloss) is a design aesthetic that spanned from roughly late 2004 to 2013 and peaked around 2007 to 2012. Early instances of the aesthetic overlapped with Y2K Futurism in the mid-2000s before completely eclipsing it by 2007, and also overlapped with the McBling and Electropop 08 aesthetics. It is characterized by its use of skeuomorphism, glossy textures, cloudy skies, tropical fish, water, bubbles...
The Giant KoreanI had this guy (Motorola Cliq) and loved it:
I loved my slider as well. They made texting so much easier. I went from one of those to a blackberry bold.
I did the opposite, kind of - from a Blackberry Pearl to my Cliq.
Texting was def easier on them. Plus it was fun to pop the keyboard out. The slider was very satisfying.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆I really would like a modern phone similar to a Danger Hiptop (aka the Sidekick) just for the actual buttons and scroll wheel and the coolness of flipping the screen open.