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Comment by Swenrekcah | Hacker News Reader

First of all, there are other languages than English.

Some of them are programming languages.

Also a touchscreen can not be operated with sweaty fingers or slightly unusual conditions.

No they really can not be reliably used, recent years’ improvements notwithstanding.

If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in the cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands, I’d appreciate a 100% physical keyboard controllable one.

Touchscreens are handy though as an auxiliary control in the ideal circumstances.

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>Some of them are programming languages.

Are you doing programming on your smartphone?

I agree with the rest - sweaty fingers or wet fingers in general, or god forbid you want to wear gloves where it's cold.

But programming on a smartphone?

When I had a Nokia N900, I programmed on the device all the time. Nothing especially big, of course, but the traditional-Linux environment and physical keyboard on that phone allowed you to quickly knock out a small shell or Python script if you had some task you wanted to automate.

I don't know about programming but I have definitely used a remote shell session from my phone while on the subway.

Can't now because my device doesn't have sufficient access, but I used to have VPN on it.

> I have definitely used a remote shell session from my phone while on the subway.

Out of necessity or just for fun/curiosity?

I have SSHed into a remote server from my phone out of necessity many, many times. When you get that e-mail on debian-security-announce that some package on one of your servers has just received a security update to fix some serious vulnerability, then ideally you install that update and reload the service right away, instead of putting it off for later.

Is this for a personal server or for a server that is being used by a paying client? If the latter, doesn't it make sense to have an oncall rotation with someone else on your team?

Personal servers.

It was for work but mostly to see if I could. I got a code review approval email while commuting and logged in to submit.

>Are you doing programming on your smartphone?

No, mostly because it lacks a physical keyboard.

> If I ever need to use my phone in an emergency outside in the cold with wet, sweaty perhaps bloody hands

Man, we have very different lifestyles. Are you a serial killer? :)

> Some of them are programming languages

You’re the first person I’ve known who programs on phone hardware rather than using a larger computer with emulators. It must be quite painful for you!

Most people carry around several liters of blood inside them. It's surprisingly easy to get some out, even by accident.

While it is undeniably more comfortable to program with a nice keyboard and big monitor, emergencies can demand that you work with what you have. Typing

cat /tmp/accumulatedfiles | while read line ; do sed -i '/inner\;/outer\;/' < $line ; done

can be rather frustrating without a real keyboard.

Yup, I've had to troubleshoot servers over SSH on Android more times than I care to count and it's time consuming. Due to this I often bring my backpack with laptop just in case. With a daily driver like this with a physical keyboard I wouldn't have to bother.

The size of this (as well as the Astro Slide[0]) deters me from buying though. Well COVID as well since I'm not on the move as much as I used to. But size-wise it's just too big, a phone this size doesn't comfortably fit in my pocket. Wish someone made something N900-sized (but lighter and thinner). The large size is great when used in computer mode, but most of the time you're using it in phone mode so I'd prefer to have it smaller.

[0] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

> Most people carry around several liters of blood inside them.

Emphasis on “most”.

I really worry about the exceptions to that.

Only on HN would I be incentivized to Google "amount of blood in a baby". It turns out babies have about 75mL of blood per kg, so an 8 pound baby would have about 270 mL of blood. Infants/toddlers up to ~29lbs (between 2~4 years old) will have less than a liter of blood.

> Man, we have very different lifestyles. Are you a serial killer? :)

It wasn't an emergency, but I've certainly wanted to use my phone recently while outside shoveling after a blizzard, with hands that are simultaneously cold, wet and sweaty. Heck, I can hardly use my phone when I'm done at the gym. And one doesn't have to be a serial killer to get blood on their hands in say, a fall while hiking, a crash while biking, or when dialing 911 while rendering aid to someone else whose blood is now on your hands.

There are 2 types of people in this world: people who would like a phone to work at such times, and people who feel like they have to do things like panic-buy toilet paper during a pandemic.

This is the difference between country and city life. Help, or trip to a hospital is quite often longer than you'd survive if you were bleeding out.

Those who have never lived a more rugged life do not understand.

Preparing for those situations isn't stupid, similarly using seatbelts and creating backups is usually a good idea. Sure, you can go without and you'll be fine...until you're not. And then you'll be glad for every little measure you took beforehand.

You don't need to write code on your phone? Me neither. But if some server suddenly starts acting weird while I'm on a roadtrip and everything I have is a smartphone, I sure as hell would not enjoy the typical SSH session using swype and autocorrect.

> But if some server suddenly starts acting weird while I'm on a roadtrip.

This sort of example always strikes me as odd because it seems far better to have a an oncall rotation for this sort of thing.

Granted that nobody has this for their personal servers, but that by definition is not an emergency.

However, if it's for a service you are providing to a paying client, I'd hope they aren't relying on a server being reset by a single individual who might be on a road trip.

I guess someone has never been in a car crash. Or had to fix a problem on the train home after leaving work. Must be nice.

Emergency mode on an iPhone is activated with physical buttons. If I’m on the train leaving work, I have my laptop in my bag...

This device is really interesting, but I agree that the product market fit is slim.

I can tell you from several unfortunate emergency experiences that you don’t just call 911. In fact if you are the one in the accident, it’s often the case that someone else calls 911 before you find your phone. What you do is call or text your family/coworkers/significant other/etc. I mean I won’t buy a phone just for this use case, but someone who routinely works in harsh environments might.

As far as programming on the phone, I used to leave my computer at work and have a computer at home. On the commute I would only have my phone. If I am at the grocery store and the client calls and says their server is acting funny, I might not want to wait to SSH to it from home or run to the office.

I think this is all a moot point in that you are right: at this point most people don’t have the need for a physical keyboard. But at the same time, I think some small subset of people will want a physical keyboard.

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