Still have this device somewhere
and 2 HTC Diamonds ( Windows CE ) - lol
I 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.
I 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:
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.
and I wedged one of those wireless charging stickers under its battery cover
How did you connect it? Was it permamently connected to the microUSB?
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.
Market demand is not the only factor, though. Manufacturers make design decisions based on a variety of factors, from supportability and manufacturing efficiency to alternative profit vectors like bloatware and proprietary ports.
If someone made a slider phone with a physical keyboard, it could be the best selling phone on the market without making the most money for the company.
There is demand though, it’s just not as high. They could make a smaller number of them just to capture the people who want it. Same goes for all the other features that are hard to find on a phone anymore. I think a lot of people are confusing “lack of demand” for “the features they want aren’t available so they just buy whatever the corporations are jamming down their throat when they need a new phone”. I for one haven’t purchased a new phone since 2016 because there’s no option that has more features than my current one. If it were to break I would be forced to buy a new shittier phone that can’t do everything I want.
I had the Touch Pro 2 and loved it! Windows Mobile was a complete mess in the best possible way.
I had one of these! Qwerty keyboard on a phone is a thing I sorely miss.
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.
I 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.
I don’t understand the obsession with thinness. My phone has a case on it and already is like 2x as thick as a current phone and it’s fine. If anything it makes it easier to hold on to and type on. While I don’t care about having a physical keyboard, there’s a lot of other stuff they could do if they didn’t care so much about making it as thin as possible.
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.
I loved my Samsung Galaxy Q. But now that I’m used to gesture typing, I wouldn’t go back. It’s much faster than hitting keys individually with my thumbs.
One thing I do miss though is how quick it was to select/copy/paste.
Gesture typing is definitely faster, but I find it much less accurate and requires vision. My old sliding phone I could write whole essays in my hoodie pocket while walking home with few to no typos, which was a niche use-case for sure but an existing one. I work outside a fair amount and would love having that back for notetaking in the field
I’m guessing you’ve already tried, but just in case: would dictation work for you?
I had a similar one that ran windows (CE maybe? I don’t recall)
I was more of a Palm guy back then, but I picked up a Droid after getting sick of Palm fucking up their new OS and cheaping out on their flagships. They could have been great, but they chose to be shit because they took too many shortcuts and fought too much internally. Design/interface wise, the Pre and PalmOS were brilliant - way ahead of their time.
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.