smartphone The crowdfunding campaign for F(x)tec Pro1 X, a slider phone that'll ship with either LineageOS or Ubuntu Touch, was announced on Indiegogo

[YamiYukiSenpai]

Summary

F(x)tec, in partnership with XDA, announced the crowdfunding campaign for the smartphone with a hardware slide-out keyboard Pro1 X, which is the successor to the slider phone Pro1 from a year ago, with few upgrades, like more 8GB RAM & 256GB storage.  Last year's model was compatible with Android/LineageOS & SailfishOS, and this year's model will be compatible with LineageOS & Ubuntu Touch, with planned support for Sailfish, Debian, Windows & dual-boot. Oh and it's got a headphone jack, if you're interested.  The Pro1 X's estimated shipping date is March 2021, with some perks sold out already.

 

Some specs include:

• Snapdragon 835
• 8GB RAM
• 256GB storage
• 3200mAh non-removable battery
• 5.99" 2160x1080 display

They've reached their goal in 2 hours.

 

Some pictures from Indiegogo:

 

Here's Jason's interview with the F(x)tec team:

 

Quotes

From the Indigegogo campaign page:

Quote

Following the success of our first smartphone, the Pro1, team F(x)tec have been working closely with our customers and the wider tech community to bring you a special version of our award winning phone. 

In partnership with XDA (one of the largest online tech communities) we present the Pro1-X; the smartphone that gives you control. Control over your data, control over your privacy, and choice over your software.  For the first time, a high spec smartphone running Lineage OS or Ubuntu Touch OS out of the box. 

 

From Jason Evangelho's article:

Quote

When we think about Linux-centric smartphones, the conversations typically revolve around Pine64’s PinePhone and Purism’s Librem 5. While the former has a terrific price tag, it makes too many compromises to be considered a mass-market daily driver phone. And don’t get me started on the latter, which is overpriced and still hasn’t shipped in its final, promised form.

 

My thoughts

As a fan of small flagships, I'm using an Xperia XZ1 Compact & iPhone 6S (planning on upgrading to iPhone 12 mini) because I like the one-handed usability.  The only thing I like more than small flagships are phones with landscape slide-out keyboard.  I miss the feeling of flicking the phone open to type, and I'm willing to go big for it (though it's slimmer than the Moto Z or the iPhone XR, so I'm cool with that).  I went for the perk that includes 2x screen protectors, spare screen, & spare battery (non-removable, but easily replaceable according to F(x)tec) & chose Ubuntu Touch (though I might change my mind with LineageOS).

The 256GB storage would be good for dual-booting (which they're planning on doing with LieageOS + Ubuntu Touch),  and I hope it'll be available by the time it gets shipped out.  I want to install LineageOS & Ubuntu Touch on it.  However, I wish the CPU's modern enough, but the 835's still good (which is the same CPU as my Xperia XZ1 Compact), and that additional RAM would be a great benefit. 

Seeing the Pro1 last year & the Pro1 X this year made me reminisce the days I owned an old Sony Ericsson Symbian slider phone most of my high school career until I got a Galaxy S4 on my last school year (2013).  I mostly hated that because it was slow and crappy & had to depend on my iPod touch 2nd gen for Internet stuff, but the typing was enjoyable. 

 

Sources

Forbes article by Jason Evangelho

[Radium_Angel]

11 minutes ago, YamiYukiSenpai said:

slide-out keyboard

Not a bad idea, unless you have to switch orientation, IMO BlackBerry did it right (which is why I use a KeyOne)

[YamiYukiSenpai]

3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Not a bad idea, unless you have to switch orientation, IMO BlackBerry did it right (which is why I use a KeyOne)

Never liked the Blackberry-style slide-out keyboard, but that's just me.

 

Is the KeyOne still good till this day?

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, YamiYukiSenpai said:

Is the KeyOne still good in till this day?

I find it perfect, but I use it for business purposes, not gaming. A physical keyboard beats anything virtual, hands down.

[Senzelian]

7 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I find it perfect, but I use it for business purposes, not gaming. A physical keyboard beats anything virtual, hands down.

I really don't enjoy typing on a physical keyboard as small as the one on the KeyOne. The additional force that's needed to push down the keys is really uncomfortable with large hands like mine. It feels like if I'd type for long enough on one of those keyboards, my hands start hurting. So personally a virtual keyboards beats anything physical, hands down.

 

So this phone looks equally horrible for me. I also don't understand the point, when I can type just as fast with a virtual keyboard, without having to flip the phone on its side.

 

Preferences - such a silly thing, right?  

[RollinLower]

awesome design, i used to have a sony phone with the slide out board and i loved it!

i do feel like the specs of this thing are a little underwhelming tough for today's market.

[YamiYukiSenpai]

2 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

awesome design, i used to have a sony phone with the slide out board and i loved it!

i do feel like the specs of this thing are a little underwhelming tough for today's market.

Definitely the thing I don't like about it.  I wouldn't have complained if it was an 855.

[samcool55]

I really don't understand why bigger brand don't make more of these things.

There's clearly a big market for these but for some reason the only way to get these things is through indiegogo or something similar.

 

Also quite expensive, make it a bit cheaper with less ram and storage and it should sell VERY well.

[Fasterthannothing]

Cool but slightly overpriced for the specs. I have a pinephone and I love it. However it's good because it's cheap. I would never pay $800 for a Linux phone right now. On the Android/Lineage OS side it's also overpriced spec wise. Also not a fan of a slide out keyboard going out of the side. I like them to slide done in the vertical position.

[rcmaehl]

inb4 835 complaints. 

 

The 835 SoC is still a great chip and tons of developers have experience with it. If the dev community wasn't interested in it I guarantee it wouldn't have reached it's goal nearly as fast as it did. Heck my own phone running an 835 still feels as fast as ever.

[YamiYukiSenpai]

1 hour ago, rcmaehl said:

The 835 SoC is still a great chip

I do agree it's still a great chip.  My Xperia right now is still a perfectly capable phone.  I only wished that the SoC was a little more recent.

[poochyena]

5 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

I find it perfect, but I use it for business purposes, not gaming. A physical keyboard beats anything virtual, hands down.

Steve Ballmer? Is that you?
 

 

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

The 835 SoC is still a great chip

Heck, my current Samsung Galaxy S7 Active is only running an 820.  This would be a step up for me.

[dizmo]

Hm. I like idea in theory, but I have little to no interest in this. $800? For those spec? Really? I see a lot of issues:

• Likely a poor camera compared to others in the same price bracket. The sensor is ancient, sure the Pixel 4 uses it, but this phone won't have the same wizardry that one does.
• Quite a small battery, especially given it's an older, less efficient SoC.
• Most designs with hinges like this will fail, or in the very least, experience wobble.
• Keyboard is awfully wide. It's one of the gripes from other reviews of their last phone. I don't see the point in a keyboard if you can't easily reach all the buttons.
• Blatantly false advertising. In their performance graphs they call the Nord device a "flagship 5g phone." Bad sign.
• They don't list storage type. Is it UFS? If so, what version? If it's not, I certainly wouldn't go near this.

Personally, I'd want something larger screen wise as well. 6" just isn't big enough. Phones are a sketchy thing to back. I can think of several that never even made it to market, and while this probably won't see that issue given they've already released something, it's not something I'd dump my money into.

 

Also, @YamiYukiSenpai what on earth are you talking about when you say it's thinner than a Moto Z or iPhone XR? At almost 14mm, it most certainly isn't.

 

6 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Not a bad idea, unless you have to switch orientation, IMO BlackBerry did it right (which is why I use a KeyOne)

I really wanted to try a KeyOne, but they never released a larger one. I had hopes they would later on, but it seems TCL gave up on BlackBerry branded devices.

6 hours ago, samcool55 said:

I really don't understand why bigger brand don't make more of these things.

There's clearly a big market for these but for some reason the only way to get these things is through indiegogo or something similar.

 

Also quite expensive, make it a bit cheaper with less ram and storage and it should sell VERY well.

Reliability. They just don't last long term, with heavy usage, or with abuse. Just creates a device that, really, won't do well in a profitability equation.

I don't think there's a big market for these at all. I'd go as far as to say that most people that need a keyboard to type on while out would be better suited with something like an iPad with their keyboard. They're incredibly light and easily slide into a bag.

5 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

inb4 835 complaints. 

 

The 835 SoC is still a great chip and tons of developers have experience with it. If the dev community wasn't interested in it I guarantee it wouldn't have reached it's goal nearly as fast as it did. Heck my own phone running an 835 still feels as fast as ever.

Have you used a phone with a new SoC extensively though?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 hours ago, Senzelian said:

I really don't enjoy typing on a physical keyboard as small as the one on the KeyOne.

Same here: while I prefer tiny physical keys to tiny virtual keys, at that size both are dominated by type-by-swipe. Not happening on a physical keyboard.

I also dislike rounded screens and curved displays at the edges. The latter really is a stupid gimmick to me. It's a downgrade from bezels.

6 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

inb4 835 complaints. 

(..)

Heck my own phone running an 835 still feels as fast as ever.

I have a slower chip and I don't feel constrained by it. I didn't feel constrained by my previous, even more lower end phone either.

 

What I always felt constrained by (except maybe the very beginning, when smartphones still did a lot less and every limitation felt more understandable) is software. Hence why I don't care much about their keyboard, their chip, or their stupid screen, but about multiple OS compatibility, how it goes, and how well they maintain it. I don't want this to be a niche phone, and therefore it should be followed by other phones, less special, with same OS compatibility, because the last thing I want is an androidized future. And since smartphones are here to stay, and things that require smartphones are likely to grow in number, I don't want to be trapped in the lowest common denominator software.

 

Maybe the next step is a tablet, though. Something to leave Samsung's Dex in the dust by not requiring  and android fallback, just being Ubuntu or whatever regardless of the use case.

[Guest]

Let’s make the phone people want but make the specs terrible and charge too much. But hey, it runs Ubuntu. 

[Bombastinator]

I personally have ever only had one device that had a keyboard that was materially better than an on screen keyboard: the psion5. One could touch type on it.  The device that came after it had a chuckle try keyboard that was too stiff to touch type on.  I also had a treo 650 which was not meant for touchtyping, but I did not find its keyboard to be materially superior to an on screen keyboard.  If this thing has a keyboard that can be touch typed on, it makes sense.  If it doesn’t it doesn’t. Looking at what I could see of the keyboard, it looks pretty chickletty.  I am not impressed.  The headphone jack is a big plus though.

 

I went iPhone for a single reason: I felt I couldn’t trust google anymore, and Apple had become the lesser evil to a degree that it was worth the switch.  If I still used an android phone I would be interested in this thing solely because of lineage and would put up with the possibly not good keyboard just to have that functionality.  As an iPhone user would my iPhone die just after this came out I would have a good bit of thinking to do, but might well go Apple again just to not to have to port again.  Depends on how bad the available iPhone was.  Right now I am less than whelmed by apple’s current offerings mostly because of the camera repair thing.

Edited November 3, 2020 by Bombastinator

[That Franc]

10 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

I find it perfect, but I use it for business purposes, not gaming. A physical keyboard beats anything virtual, hands down.

KeyOne is nice, but only up until the point when you have to type in Russian. That keyboard is terrible for multilingual users.

[YamiYukiSenpai]

7 hours ago, dizmo said:

Also, @YamiYukiSenpai what on earth are you talking about when you say it's thinner than a Moto Z or iPhone XR? At almost 14mm, it most certainly isn't.

I was referring to the width.

 

5 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I went iPhone for a single reason: I felt I couldn’t trust google anymore, and Apple had become the lesser evil to a degree that it was worth the switch.

It's one of the reasons I carry an iPhone as well.  Whenever I create a new account that has the Sign-in With Apple, I use that so that the services I sign up for won't have my email (or Firefox relay if I'm on the desktop).  It'd be nice if they got a phone-relay in addition to email, but that seems to be harder.

 

7 hours ago, dizmo said:

• Blatantly false advertising. In their performance graphs they call the Nord device a "flagship 5g phone." Bad sign.
• They don't list storage type. Is it UFS? If so, what version? If it's not, I certainly wouldn't go near this.

Something to point out & ask on their Twitter account or their Indiegogo campaign.  Totally missed the "flagship 5G phone".

[Radium_Angel]

7 hours ago, That Franc said:

KeyOne is nice, but only up until the point when you have to type in Russian. That keyboard is terrible for multilingual users.

Didn't know that, but it does seem to be targeted to an English using audience...

[suicidalfranco]

17 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Not a bad idea, unless you have to switch orientation, IMO BlackBerry did it right (which is why I use a KeyOne)

what i would give for BB to return with the Passport. Best implementation ever imo.

[Doobeedoo]

Hmm I like these takes, but yeah don't like that form factor at all. Also that price and for those specs, nah. Aside from memory everything else is so average. 

[DavidKalinowski]

9 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Let’s make the phone people want but make the specs terrible and charge too much. But hey, it runs Ubuntu. 

right, I would maybe drop 800 USD on a phone with an 865SOC running ubuntu touch as long as it could USB-C dock and drive three monitors so I can replace my PC with it. But I will never spend more than 250 on a phone that cant do that.

[Drama Lama]

Interesting concept but I think people won’t buy it as a primary phone and mostly just as a cool thing to play around with.

[AlTech]

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

Hm. I like idea in theory, but I have little to no interest in this. $800? For those spec? Really? I see a lot of issues:

It's not $800.

 

There are versions and bundles at different price points including: $650, $680, and some enthusiast bundles for $720 , $820, and $850.

 

Any of the models above $680 are completely unnecessary.

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

• Likely a poor camera compared to others in the same price bracket. The sensor is ancient, sure the Pixel 4 uses it, but this phone won't have the same wizardry that one does.

That's not the point. This phone has a camera because it needs to not because it should.

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

• Quite a small battery, especially given it's an older, less efficient SoC.

No it really isn't. It's about the right size for this considering this is the around the size of battery older 835 devices used.

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

• Most designs with hinges like this will fail, or in the very least, experience wobble.
• Keyboard is awfully wide. It's one of the gripes from other reviews of their last phone. I don't see the point in a keyboard if you can't easily reach all the buttons.
• Blatantly false advertising. In their performance graphs they call the Nord device a "flagship 5g phone." Bad sign.

Compared to similar or competing devices the Nord is much faster.

 

The main competition for this would be the Pinephone or the Librem 5.

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

• They don't list storage type. Is it UFS? If so, what version? If it's not, I certainly wouldn't go near this.

Personally, I'd want something larger screen wise as well. 6" just isn't big enough. Phones are a sketchy thing to back. I can think of several that never even made it to market, and while this probably won't see that issue given they've already released something, it's not something I'd dump my money into.

The campaign is already fully funded as of me checking.

 

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

I don't think there's a big market for these at all. I'd go as far as to say that most people that need a keyboard to type on while out would be better suited with something like an iPad with their keyboard.

Well no, it's a niche. They're not expecting everybody and their mom to buy one.

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

They're incredibly light and easily slide into a bag.

Have you used a phone with a new SoC extensively though?

 

I know you're quoting a different person but I've used an 845. It was a bit of a step up compared to 820 which I also have used but honestly the only real difference was 820 was hot and 845 wasn't. Sure the 845 was faster but in real world usage it felt identical on LineageOS.

 

Cos both of them on LineageOS are stupidly fast.