TRUE old tech users, using today

[pkiff]

This one seems promising, but once again...unless I can order it and get it delivered within a week it's a non-starter...
https://www.xda-developers.com/pro1-x/

By now you've probably solved your phone-with-a-physical keyboard search problem, but I thought I'd chime in on this thread regardless.

This Pro1-X will be more or less version 2 of the phone from the relatively new company F(x)tec. Their first version appears to have sold out. I considered buying one last year, but it was very expensive.
F(x)tec:
https://www.fxtec.com/

I've been tracking that F(x)tec company since they started just a few years ago. One of their key hardware designers developed a keyboard "moto mod" for the Motorola Z series back in 2017/2018 under the company name "Livermorium" (aside: talk about a terrible name for marketing!). I have always been a big fan of physical keyboards, and the promise of this keyboard mod was the main thing that pushed me into buying a Motorola Z2 Play a few years back - I needed a new phone and there was this cool keyboard that was going to be released for it later that year. Lenovo itself promoted the upcoming keyboard mod at CES 2018.
Keyboard Moto Mod at CES 2018 (link jumps to 3:06 in video):
https://youtu.be/k46-8XWeIbE?t=186

Unfortunately, despite the fact that they had fully working samples, Livermorium only managed to ship a handful before they had to throw in the towel. Apparently, there were supply chain issues (some parts needed to be ordered in the 10's of thousands in order to be economical) as well as issues with Lenovo (who basically provided no support for most makers of "Moto Mods" or actively got in the way of quick production, instead of finding a way of helping those small independent makers to succeed). The remains of their IndieGoGo campaign is still visible here:
Keyboard Mod: A Physical Keyboard For The Moto Z:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyb ... pdates/all
The crowdfunded Moto Mod keyboard is dead:
https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-13-liv ... -dead.html

I expect that the new Pro1-X from F(x)tec will be a nice phone for physical keyboard diehards who want a modern, capable device and are willing to pay a lot for one. It is being explicitly designed I think to be compatible with alternate OSes instead of just stock Android.

Returning to the theme of "TRUE old tech" in use today, I happen to have just received a Sony Xperia Mini Pro - that's the one with the mini physical keyboard:
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro review:
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/phone ... 076/review

I used one of these for years until its USB port broke, rendering it useless (though I continued to use it for a while by swapping batteries that I charged with an external charger, and by copying files using the microSD card). I am looking forward to getting this old beauty set up again with LegacyXperia:
https://github.com/LegacyXperia/Wiki/wiki

I actually have a non-keyboard version of this phone (just called the Xperia Mini) that I have periodically used for my second business line, but my build of LegacyXperia on it has always been a bit flakey due to memory capacity issues - I have to use an app that tricks the OS into thinking that a partition of the microSD card is actually internal memory - and once in a while, this method fails spectacularly, forcing me to need to wipe the entire phone and start over. I am hoping to build a more stable version of this for use in my "new" Xperia Mini Pro.

Finally, I also have a semi-working Motorola Photon Q, which is probably the last, great landscape slider keyboard available in a mass-produced Android device prior to the new F(x)tec versions:
Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE review: the best full QWERTY phone on Sprint's network:
https://www.engadget.com/2012-08-21-mot ... eview.html

These Photon Q's were I think never released with GSM sim cards and were restricted to Srpint only when manufactured for the North American market, but various hackers modded them by adding a user-insertable sim tray. You can still pick one of these modded versions up on eBay. You can run LineageOS on it, but the last version I had working was v12. It looks like there is a v14 available, though the official LineageOS site shows that this model is no longer supported, so you might be opening yourself up to security risks if you do use it:
https://lineageosroms.com/xt897/

Lots of love for old keyboard devices over here! I even have a working Sharp Zaurus 3200:
https://pocketables.com/2006/09/overview_of_the.html
which I was thinking of trying to do some work on again. Not a phone, but a nice quirky piece of old tech that just barely missed out on its usefulness, and that I still keep looking for a reason to put back into circulation.

Phil.

[ajkula66]

By now you've probably solved your phone-with-a-physical keyboard search problem, but I thought I'd chime in on this thread regardless.

Actually no, I haven't. Still waiting to see what the next tide brings along.

This Pro1-X will be more or less version 2 of the phone from the relatively new company F(x)tec. Their first version appears to have sold out. I considered buying one last year, but it was very expensive.
F(x)tec:
https://www.fxtec.com/

I do hold some hope in that one...but $829 seems very difficult to swallow...

And you sir seem to have a ton of very sweet gadgets...

[pkiff]

I do hold some hope in that one...but $829 seems very difficult to swallow..

Yeah - and it'll be even *more* in Canadian dollars (aka "loonies" - which in this case may be an apt description). I'm still using the Motorola Z2 Play that I got a few years ago, even though I never was able to get the keyboard mod for it. A lucky few early supporters did in fact get these keyboards shipped to them, but no one who has one would sell it, I would think. And in the meantime, I've picked up quite a few of the other "Moto mods" for this device, and I've even gotten used to missing the physical keyboard. So I'm probably going to stick with this one for a few years yet. I may even pick up a spare Moto Z-whatever as a backup when people start throwing them away for cheap.

[kfzhu1229]

I do hold some hope in that one...but $829 seems very difficult to swallow...

Unfortunately I think you should thank Apple for that. They shatter records in price tags that now if there is a US$829 smartphone it's considered budget friendly.

[ajkula66]

Unfortunately I think you should thank Apple for that. They shatter records in price tags that now if there is a US$829 smartphone it's considered budget friendly.

That's fine, I can hang onto my Blackberry Classic for another few years...especially if I buy another one as a backup...not necessarily where I want to go, but am OK with it if nothing else pops up.

[unix_joe]

The Fxtec is a design based on the old Nokia N7, which was one of the last great Symbian devices. I think I've read that Fxtec has some of those old Nokia engineers working for them, but it seems that everybody has old Nokia engineers working on their phones these days, except for Nokia themselves.

I personally never had the N7, but I thought it was the coolest thing in the world when it came out. In those days, I never spent more than $100 on a phone. Then later on, I bought the Nokia E6, the successor to the E72/E73, which I got used for $149 back in 2012. Then I moved on to BlackBerry Q10 and the price I saw as reasonable for a phone slowly increased until it became normal to spend several hundred dollars on a phone and then get a new one a year later.

I am on the fence with the Fxtec. The nostalgia hits home, and the prospect of an unlocked bootloader is admirable. It is too darn expensive for what it is, but if I can get everyone in my family on Signal and then run Ubuntu Touch on my Fxtec, then it will solve the basic communication problem that a phone should solve. If I could guarantee that the company will stick around for at least 5 years, I can probably justify purchasing for myself. We'll see.

[pkiff]

The Fxtec is a design based on the old Nokia N7, which was one of the last great Symbian devices. I think I've read that Fxtec has some of those old Nokia engineers working for them, but it seems that everybody has old Nokia engineers working on their phones these days, except for Nokia themselves.

Interesting. That F(x)tec slider does indeed look a lot like the Nokia N7. I never held one of those N7's in my hands, but now that you've reminded me of it, I remember liking the idea that the display would tilt as you slid it, in order to make it easier to sit on a table or to view at certain angles.

There really used to be so much more variation in phone designs. When I see phones now, I think they are all so boring. There is so little difference from one brand to another and one year's model to another, it is hard for me to understand how people can still have such strong brand loyalty. I mean, yes, there continue to be innovations - like the crazy cameras phones are getting these days - but very little that makes a new phone model truly unique.

[unix_joe]

There really used to be so much more variation in phone designs. When I see phones now, I think they are all so boring. There is so little difference from one brand to another and one year's model to another, it is hard for me to understand how people can still have such strong brand loyalty. I mean, yes, there continue to be innovations - like the crazy cameras phones are getting these days - but very little that makes a new phone model truly unique.

Agreed. It's a mature market these days, and the manufacturers have figured it's cheapest to put two pieces of glass together with silicon sandwiched in the middle. Better for sales and reliability, but worse ergonomically if you type a lot. I don't have the attention span to watch movies.

The Nokia N7 slider was one of the more unique phones from those days, but I also liked the N900 which was just a traditional slider. There was a project for many years to update it, called the Neo900, which never happened and I lost money backing. I also backed (and owned, briefly) the Jolla phone, and I donated to the Jolla tablet which never materialized and I was refunded half of my deposit. I also had the Firefox phone for a few weeks, what a POS that was.

So regarding the F(x)tec phone, I'm hesitant to pull the trigger only to potentially get burned again. But I'm open to a reasonably open, usable phone that isn't iPhone or Android.

[TRS-80]

I'm open to a reasonably open, usable phone that isn't iPhone or Android.

Are you aware of recent (IMO) exciting developments in (actual, no-bs) GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and PinePhone)?

It's early days for sure, and may not (yet) meet your requirements for "daily driver" but for me the PinePhone is "close enough" that I have ordered one.

[rumbero]

Are you aware of recent (IMO) exciting developments in (actual, no-bs) GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and PinePhone)?

It's early days for sure, and may not (yet) meet your requirements for "daily driver" but for me the PinePhone is "close enough" that I have ordered one.

While being aware it is not yet ready for daily use but only suitable for developers, I got a PinePhone about a year ago. After playing a bit with it now it is just accumulating dust.

Got hold of a new LG V20 from 2016 a while ago which in the end is so much more practical (thanks to LineageOS).

[unix_joe]

I'm open to a reasonably open, usable phone that isn't iPhone or Android.

Are you aware of recent (IMO) exciting developments in (actual, no-bs) GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and PinePhone)?

It's early days for sure, and may not (yet) meet your requirements for "daily driver" but for me the PinePhone is "close enough" that I have ordered one.

To be honest, I thought Librem was vaporware. I had only heard of PinePhone in passing, so I'll look into it, thanks.

It was pure coincidence that I was researching keyboard phones a couple of weeks ago, when I found the one from Fxtec, and discussion was concurrently going on here about it.

[Omineca]

To be honest, I thought Librem was vaporware. I had only heard of PinePhone in passing, so I'll look into it, thanks.

I bought a PinePhone from the original batch. I've been running Linux on my ThinkPads for years with no difficulties, but after a year, the PinePhone was nowhere near being reliable enough to use on a regular basis.

On the positive side, it sold fairly quickly on eBay.

[TRS-80]

To be honest, I thought Librem was vaporware.

As someone who has been following it fairly closely for some years now, I would still say the jury is out on Librem/Purism. Lots of drama / complaints / delays for sure, but on the other hand they are shipping phones. Late, and slowly, but they are shipping them.

Understand that Pine64 and Purism are taking very, very different approaches:

- Pine tend to base their devices on older, cheaper, less performant but mostly already well supported (in Linux) chips like the A64 in case of PinePhone. Where Purism went with a newer, sexier, more powerful (and more free) chip (iMX8) but that meant they spent like an extra year or two getting that better supported in Linux. Which was a big part of the delay.

- Also Purism seem more committed to F/LOSS, in fact the Librem 5 will be the first phone to ever achieve FSF "Respects your Freedom" certification. Whereas Pine device might still need a couple blobs here or there (which is in fact quite typical on ARM).

- Purism have also been employing several developers for several years who, in addition to kernel work on iMX8 (and other stuff, too), have also created phosh (phone shell) and upstreamed that into Gnome. Interestingly, phosh seems to be the #1 user interface on all of these phones, including the PinePhone(!). Pine OTOH do not employ any developers, leaving that instead to the community. And the two devices reflect this in their respective prices.

- There is probably more but you get the picture.

I bought a PinePhone from the original batch. I've been running Linux on my ThinkPads for years with no difficulties, but after a year, the PinePhone was nowhere near being reliable enough to use on a regular basis.

On the positive side, it sold fairly quickly on eBay.

Well, you sold it already, but it seems to me like things have come a long way since then. I would still not call it a daily driver for the average consumer by any means, but for someone technically inclined, who wants to help out with making actual GNU/Linux phones a reality, they are just barely reaching usable state (for me anyway) which is why I finally decided to buy one. But definitely not for everybody! Do your homework, YMMV, etc...

[ajkula66]

So I caved in and bought a BlackBerry Keyone, yes, the Android-powered unit...

I probably wouldn't have done anything of a kind had my Classic not developed issues that are pointing to the possibility of it dying on me at any given moment, without a working spare in the house which is not a viable option. Sure, I still have my work phone in case of an emergency but I prefer not to use it for any personal stuff.

The new-to-me Blackberry is actually quite nice although it has taken me a while to de-Google it to the extent possible on the given device. Since my data will be turned off 98% of the time they won't really get all that much info on/from me.

Still looking for alternatives, though...

[Summilux]

There really used to be so much more variation in phone designs. When I see phones now, I think they are all so boring. There is so little difference from one brand to another and one year's model to another, it is hard for me to understand how people can still have such strong brand loyalty.

Exactly. Well, up until recently.

It used to be - and still is, to a large extent - all the same slabs from either Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, etc. No external difference, and just a few internal tweaks here and there.

I got really excited by Project Ara, really a fantastic concept involving advanced modularity and an open ecosystem. Sadly, it's been killed by Google.

But right now, as the first phones featuring rollable screens hit the market, the mobile landscape is starting to be refreshing.
Finally manufacturers are trying new concepts and form factors. And the clamshell design is fashionable again !

[ThinkPad560X]

I am still using my Motorola Razr V3m "Silver" Verizon. Just got a new old stock battery for it and it is holding good charge. Verizon still has network up for these phones even though they do not allow any 3G or older to be activated. Phone is still in like new condition and still running as new, No problems with network issues.

[TH2002]

My daily driver ever since I've had my own computer has been a 2005 Dell OptiPlex 170L (Pentium 4 HT @2.8ghz, 1.5GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 6200 and Windows XP SP3)

There have been times I've considered putting Win7 on this machine but the hard drive (original 40GB) is too small for a dualboot configuration and having Win7 alone wouldn't really be worth the slower performance to me.

[TH2002]

So I caved in and bought a BlackBerry Keyone, yes, the Android-powered unit...

I probably wouldn't have done anything of a kind had my Classic not developed issues that are pointing to the possibility of it dying on me at any given moment, without a working spare in the house which is not a viable option. Sure, I still have my work phone in case of an emergency but I prefer not to use it for any personal stuff.

The new-to-me Blackberry is actually quite nice although it has taken me a while to de-Google it to the extent possible on the given device. Since my data will be turned off 98% of the time they won't really get all that much info on/from me.

Still looking for alternatives, though...

I had a KeyOne for a while and had constant problems with it. The touchscreen and keyboard would stop responding at random and I'd have to lock and unlock the phone to get them working again, the plastic back cover was already falling off from the factory, apps would crash all the time, oh and the annoying BLOATWARE that every single phone manufacturer has to pump their phones with these days!

In all fairness it wasn't an entirely bad phone, the physical keyboard was great (when it worked) and the LED at the top of the phone that would flash different colors for different notifications was cool. Blue for text messages, purple for Yahoo and so on and I'd still prefer the KeyOne over the piece of **** S20 that I have now.

[kfzhu1229]

Well here's a piece of pretty obsolete tech that I am still using today: https://imgur.com/a/zwnOTTp
This 5MP digital camera was, for just shy of a decade, our family's go to camera for any kind of photographs. It has then gone to retirement when smartphones came with far more megapixels and is lighter than this thing.
But these days, I have picked it up again, along with its spare batteries and the charger. I find it pretty useful today for taking photos of various laptop repair projects that I only need 5MP for (and for saving storage) and that a big lens that focuses on a wide area at once as well as the Xenon flash comes useful for. Most commonly though, I develop a habit of using this thing to take pictures of various CPU's and GPU's that I feel like it's worth to take a picture of, such as the NVS140M chip displayed on that photo.
This is far from being very old, but it surely is pretty obsolete, and Kodak is very much not the same company anymore today.

[axur-delmeria]

Well here's a piece of pretty obsolete tech that I am still using today: https://imgur.com/a/zwnOTTp

Retired my old Olympus C765UZ in 2019. Was a beast with its 10x optical zoom and superb manual mode (it was a prosumer camera after all), but image stabilization was nonexistent, had proprietary storage media (xD-Picture card), battery life became shorter and shorter, and the buttons became finicky especially the power button.

Sad to see it go, but it was getting too cumbersome to use and maintain. If I'd get a replacement/upgrade it would be a DSLR or mirrorless camera with telephoto, but I don't have the budget for something that excessive.

[ThinkPad560X]

I just swapped over to my IBM ThinkPad T30. I even changed out the palmrest to the nontouchPad one " I got both types" for the classic look. It still runs great and fast for being the original 40GB HDD and Windows XP Pro, witch I'm typing this up on now. This was the machine IBM gave me when I use to repair for them and I got to keep it. So I had this since it was new. I maxed the RAM on it, witch I think was 1GB and even got the opened spaced RAM cover. Still even have the docking station for it.

But yeah I am running firefox on it and no lagg. And since I changed out palmrests, I cleaned and put new thermal paste on the cpu. The original was completely gone.

[RealBlackStuff]

T30 can use 2x1GB PC2100 or PC2700 RAM.

[lophiomys]

For daily work stil using a T43p 4:3 UXGA SATA mod, thanks to RealBlackStuff and ajkula66. Respect.
This one still has the classic 7-row keyboard, without the Windows Key.

[mikemex]

I've been a forum member for over a decade now and I still own some machines I had when I used to lurk more often back then (X220 and T420). My dad used the T420 for many years (I never liked the 1366x768 screen and it was costly to replace it back then) until I built him a new PC from pieces I had lying around this year; he's got a "brand new" Sandy Bridge all in one using a Thin ITX DH61AG mobo I had brand new in box. It's running a 2100T 35W processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SU650 SSD in a custom / slim PC case (InWin K1) that you can mount a big monitor on (main reason for the switch). He couldn't be happier

I upgraded my partner's machine to a Tiny M900, sixth generation Core i7 6500T (35W), 16GB DDR4, 512GB A400 SSD. The little machine has it's DVD enclosure with port replicator and it's attached to the back of a big 24" screen. She's running Windows 7 and couldn't be happier too.

Myself, I used to run a Sandy Bridge machine built using an Asrock Z68 Pro3M. I selected that board specifically because it has support for legacy stuff: parallel, serial ports but believe it or not, it also has a floppy port. I built it because of CNC stuff and uses an old IBM ThinkCentre case I found.

In that machine I began with the 2100T my dad now uses but I later upgraded it to a 3770 (like three years later or so). I used it with 16GB of RAM and a Samsung 64 SLC SSD drive off a X300, along with other drives for extra storage. I think I had a 1050Ti on it for a while.

That machine lasted me for many, many years and I still have it but I cannibalized it for parts to build a machine for a nephew as I was going to a trip to Switzerland and figured I wouldn't be using it for a while. That was right before the pandemic, so I didn't got back to rebuild it. I now run a Haswell 4790 with 32GB of RAM in an Asus Q87M-E CSM with a 512GB SU850 and Radeon 7850. It's a fairly potent and modern machine, but it's old by now. The Asus motherboard, I had it new in box as a spare. I got to use it this year after the Biostar HiFi B85S3+ I had previously died this year. I think I used to run a 4430 before that.

I'm now in the process of building the two desktops in my signature (Skylake) using some industrial boards I found for cheap. They caught my eye for having both M.2 slots and Mini PCIE. I choose Skylake because it's the last version to officially support Windows 7.

As for Thinkpads, I own several:

* X301
* X220
* T420
* T420s (x2)
* T530
* W530
* X1 Carbon Gen 4

Funny thing is, the oldest laptop I own, is the one I use the most (the X301). It's really in a different class compared to the other machines so I don't mind having patience for it. Although, to be honest, it has never felt slow.

I'm planning to get rid of a lot of my stuff this year, mostly because I don't feel comfortable hoarding stuff other people might find useful. I mean, in a few years nobody is going to want to run this kind of stuff so I'll have to throw it into the trash if I ever decide I no longer need it. Better to fix / upgrade it and pass it to someone who will really use it.

The oldest machine I currently own is a K6-2+ (it may as well be K6-3+ I don't remember). I keep it out of nostalgia. Both because it's a special processor (the first with integrated cache) but also because it was given to me as a gift by a person with a very sad life. It always reminds me how this world is full of nice people.

[TRS-80]

I just wanted to mention, for George and my other fellow "no physical phone keyboard" lamentors, that I ordered the keyboard for my PinePhone maybe last week or so, fairly soon after the release announcement.

It should take some more weeks to get here, if anyone is interested maybe I can be bothered to share my evaluation after I have a chance to give it a proper frob. In a separate thread of course.

Unfortunately PinePhone itself is still probably not in "daily driver" state for "normal people" but if you feel adventurous, like to tinker, care about freedom and alternatives to incumbents on smartphones a great deal (as I do) maybe it's worth a look.

Cheers!

[SAIYAN48]

I have a Pentium-MMX machine with FDD drives. Plus my R51.