Physical Keyboard Smart Phones - The rarest breed of phone.

[Preacher ✝]

I ordered a kit a few weeks ago, and I fucking hate everybody in this stupid discord.

Coincidentally the unprofessionalism from the discord tranny jannies was something I considered to be a good indicator that the BrackBerry Crassic was not an outright scam back when I decided to order one, though I also used a temporary discord account to scope it out and didn't say anything or stick around.

An outright scam product would go for an overly professional customer service team because it would help convince corpos and normies to buy in. Instead the vibe I get from Zinwa has always been "nerds doing a passion project" which tracts with the tranny mods sweeping the discord for free and having meltdowns because they read a rude tone into an innocent question.

The risk there is that they overpromise and underdeliver, but that was a risk I knowingly accepted due to the genuine appeal the prodcut has for me.

Even Reddit recognizes this bullshit

As for the redditors and the reviewers they reference, I ask if they really understood what they were buying. This is a decade+ old chassis with new guts to run like a budget phone from a generation ago. It can only use 4g, and its been cobbled together by some nerdy chinamen. It's one of the most niche pieces of technology ever made; while its debatable if the Titan 2 is better, the Clicks Communicator and Titan 2 Elite almost certainly will be.

I'm still glad I ordered one and I look forward to its arrival. Unless its truly abyssmal it will be my daily use phone until the Clicks Communicator drops later this year, and even if it is actually unusable I will still enjoy having it as a curio.

 

[big pauper]

Coincidentally the unprofessionalism from the discord tranny jannies was something I considered to be a good indicator that the BrackBerry Crassic was not an outright scam back when I decided to order one, though I also used a temporary discord account to scope it out and didn't say anything or stick around.

An outright scam product would go for an overly professional customer service team because it would help convince corpos and normies to buy in. Instead the vibe I get from Zinwa has always been "nerds doing a passion project" which tracts with the tranny mods sweeping the discord for free and having meltdowns because they read a rude tone into an innocent question.

The risk there is that they overpromise and underdeliver, but that was a risk I knowingly accepted due to the genuine appeal the prodcut has for me.

while its debatable if the Titan 2 is better, the Clicks Communicator and Titan 2 Elite almost certainly will be.

I think you might have miscalculated your assessment because this looks to be the same kind of behavior expected from things that are scams in everything but intention, the cyclone of narcissism that kind of culture creates isn't conductive to the feedback necessary for a highly technical passion project. While it's definitely not some kind of branded corporate excercise it also doesn't mean that just because it's run by a handful of chinese people doesn't mean it's not going to fall into the same kind of autistic disrepair that many passion projects do.


The titan 2 is kind of mid but it's a functional phone out of the box, I don't even think the xinwa phone comes in a shrink wrapped box, you know?

 

[Redeemer]

I'm still glad I ordered one and I look forward to its arrival

Same. I think it's a cool project and I honestly am hopeful that it could be a minimum viable daily phone for me. But it's going to be some elbow grease on my end to get it set up and every time I try to work out the logistics, I go in the discord and just rage at these stupid jannies.

 

[Preacher ✝]

this looks to be the same kind of behavior expected from things that are scams in everything but intention

The intention matters to me. If it's not intentionally a scam then at worst it can be a ripoff and I was willing to risk being ripped off for the chance at a BlackBerry Classic that runs Android.

But it's going to be some elbow grease on my end to get it set up

Speaking of which, why did you order a kit instead of a complete phone? Do you already have an old Classic?

 

[Redeemer]

Seaking of which, why did you order a kit instead of a complete phone? Do you already have an old Classic?

I only heard about the project maybe a month ago. They weren't taking full device orders at the time and I found a used Q20 on eBay for like $50. I'm pretty confident in my DIY handiness, but it IS conditional on having docs that are accurate, which is why it's slightly vexing.

I'm also super interested in these SOCs all of these projects are using. A few years ago I tried to do a rough spec out on basically this exact kind of device for myself. I ran into a brick wall almost immediately which is that I couldn't find a good SOC package. Qualcomm won't sell you fewer than like 10k units. Meanwhile digikey actually stocks these mediatek things.

Either theyweren't around or I didn't know about them. The sudden uptick in these projects makes me think everyone realized they were a thing all of a sudden. I haven't been able to find a devkit to work with them yet, but if it exists it could be super cool for prototyping all kinds of mobile gadgets.

 

[Preacher ✝]

I only heard about the project maybe a month ago. They weren't taking full device orders at the time

Sounds like they might have run out of the new old stock chassis they were using at first. Glad I got my order in early.

 

[big pauper]

The intention matters to me. If it's not intentionally a scam then at worst it can be a ripoff and I was willing to risk being ripped off for the chance at a BlackBerry Classic that runs Android.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions, my friend. I mean if you're just buying it for the novelty then it's a pretty good one - but there's a lot of work that goes into making a cell phone. hell there's a lot of work that goes into making kernels with proper peripheral driver support - something you can pretty confidently assume isn't happening in that discord just by the tone of the admins.

That's not an environment where people are making mistakes and correcting them, it's an environment where people are bludgeoning outsiders into submission. Garrys mod private server ass vibe

 

[Preacher ✝]

something you can pretty confidently assume isn't happening in that discord just by the tone of the admins.

I think you might be mistaken here.

The discord isnt shit because the guys making the phones are running it. The discord is shit because the guys making the phones are too busy making phones to bother with it and thus it is being run by stereotypical do it for free tranny jannies. The guys making the phones are basically uninvolved in the discord at this point.

 

[big pauper]

I think you might be mistaken here.

The discord isnt shit because the guys making the phones are running it. The discord is shit because the guys making the phones are too busy making phones to bother with it and thus it is being run by stereotypical do it for free tranny jannies. The guys making the phones are basically uninvolved in the discord at this point.

This is what people said about starbound when it was in early access because redegit was a seasoned game developer who worked on terraria. just saying

 

[Redeemer]

Even if the jannies in the discord aren't technically contributors, it appears they are the only ones with open comms to Zinwa. I'm not sure he has any collaborators, and he relies on them heavily to manage orders and public communication. They are contributors to the project in all but name.

 

[big pauper]

there was a system update for the titan 2 to android 16. It didn't exactly add any features so it's pretty much exactly the same but everything is slightly different looking. the notification window is kind of fucked up on medium UI scale now. also they changed the IME bar to a transparent gradient which made pastiera ugly looking until the guy updates it. Besides that they added a new type of touchpad input which is a fucked up useless and glitchy mouse mode that doesn't make any sense. the scrolling portion moves the mouse too but both have different sensitivities so its just a nonsense experience plus you get to the top of the screen and hit the notification bar and not only does it stop scrolling but it pulls down the shade which glitches out. can't think of a single app where this would be useful

also they made the built-in kika keyboard stop mangling english sentences, and also added basic hardware features to the rear screen (brightness adjust and the ability to turn it off). that's it. very mid system update, i have a feeling they threw this beta ass mouse mode out the door to entertain users because the android 16 update took up dev effort. you guys... just make some new watch faces. that's all you gotta do.

e: also they added the ability to permanently disable the swipe gestures which, again, should have been an option day 1

 

[big pauper]

I've had this phone for like six months and one of the biggest ergonomic missteps is that there isn't any way to wake the screen up on the front because the screen doesn't have tap to wake and the fingerprint sensor is on the side. So its hard to just peck at it on a flat surface to see the clock. I figured they expected you to flip it over and use the rear screen

But I just figured out that if the phone is locked, alt will wake the screen. The alt key.

 

[TheTitKoker]

Honestly, peak qwerty was Nokia E71 & 72, with honorable mention to E6 despite the fucking touch screen that had to be backlit and killed the glorious week-long battery life. If ONLY the camera was better on those beasts, but sadly alas.

 

[⚞⛇⚟]

There are some barcode scanners that work with 5G and have keyboards. They are pretty bulky, but they can be used as a phone and are more up-to-date than most other options.

 

[big pauper]

There are some barcode scanners that work with 5G and have keyboards. They are pretty bulky, but they can be used as a phone and are more up-to-date than most other options.
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that's an interesting thought but i can just tell by the look that the keys are going to be rubber membranes. blackberry keyboards are metal dome switches. you're not hitting 50 wpm on that keyboard



this is a whole ass market segment that i didn't know existed, that's interesting. a long time ago when i worked for mcdonalds they had some little handheld scanner to take inventory, but it required an entirely custom software integration stack. it felt like it was hacked to work with the TELNET based inventory system, probably interfaced over fucking parallel, barely worked right, had shit battery life, and had a 10-character non-backlit monochrome 9 segment display, and probably cost like $500. I think they only got rid of that system in 2020. they probably still use the same scanner

 

[Preacher ✝]

My BrackBerry Crassic has shipped!

UPDATE

Back in January when I made the quoted post, I had received the pictured notification via email.

Unfortunately however I have good reason to believe it was either accidental, premature, or otherwise incorrect.

The tracking number provided does not bring up any results on the website for the shipping company, and in the Shopify app all it says is the label has been created.

 

[⚞⛇⚟]

So there is enough bezel on the Clicks Communicator for an entire keyboard, but having the camera be a part of the bezel instead of taking up room on the screen is too much? Also curved displays are stupid, displays should all be square with sharp corners.
Did people forget that phones without notches and curved screens used to exist?

 

[Preacher ✝]

but having the camera be a part of the bezel instead of taking up room on the screen is too much?

The could have slipped the camera in at the bottom of the screen between the T and Y keys.

 

[big pauper]

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So there is enough bezel on the Clicks Communicator for an entire keyboard, but having the camera be a part of the bezel instead of taking up room on the screen is too much? Also curved displays are stupid, displays should all be square with sharp corners.
Did people forget that phones without notches and curved screens used to exist?

they're totally using the same panel. does the clicks have a capacative keyboard with scrolling or navigation because if it doesn't then i legitimately don't know why anybody is hype about it at all lol