When Steve Jobs criticised the qwerty keyboard during the launching of the first iPhone in 2007, it was the doom of BlackBerry and even other qwerty keyboards on android smartphones.
But then a company is reinventing this experience is a UK based Startup F(X) Tec which had spent several private finds in researching and finally creating a android powered slide smartphone.
The device named Pro1 is thought to be the reinventor of the lost glory of qwerty keyboard experience as seen on old android smartphones like the HTC Dream, Blackberry smartphones.
The device utilises a sliding mechanism that turns it from a full-screen smartphone to a device with five-row, 64-key typing machine.
The device is 13.99mm thick when it’s both locked together. Moving it upwards and downward to create the flip shape that reveals the qwerty is smooth and fast. Flip phones have really advanced in 2019.
Thw good part of the device is that it will be running the latest Android Pie 9.0 when it eventually gets released in July.
It may be a great user experience in conventional terms, but there aren’t really too many optimizations when it comes to working with landscape orientations — especially when a physical keyboard can come into play.
While the company behind the innovation is really working hard to making the experience extraordinary and different from those we’ve had in the past, making system applications, for example, the email or calendar apps display content natively in two panes whereby one pane displays the list of inboxes while the other shows information of the email being opened which also displays messages or appointments. The home screen is able to adjust so that widgets take up the same space and alignment as they would in vertical orientation.
Being a small startup with private money, there are some compromises to be had — the older Snapdragon 835 chipset being one of them — but there are some hardware features to be had like stereo speakers, USB-C, a headphone jack, microSD expandability, a side-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor and NFC.
The unlocked Pro 1 is being previewed at MWC 2019 and will undergo further tweaks — including switching AMOLED displays suppliers — before direct-to-consumer sales start around July for $649 in the United States and £649 in the United Kingdom.
You can learn more about this phone in the link below this story. Stay tuned for more coverage from Pocketnow!
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