Keyboard Other Half [answered]

Of course I agree these should be prioritised. Would be nice if they were still able to provide some/minimal resources to assist others (community?) to bring this about. Jolla are unlike after all. #NoPressure :)

Agreed pcfe - The OS is so sketchy at the moment and there are those among us that couldn't care less about a qwerty keyboard.

agreed as well. for a slider keyboard to be useful, the phone should support landscape mode everywhere.

Quite a while has passed, and still no sufficiently good keyboard alternative. I have Dirkvl's TOH keyboard, but a home-made device simply isn't good enough. The Nokia E7 was about the same size as the Jolla and had an excellent HW keyboard while still staying slim and comfortable in your pocket. This just can't be done without significant company resources. It will have to be done by Jolla!

The problem is that there are no third parties... I think Jolla should at least produce one keyboard OH, to show the need, the feasibility and the potential market of OH

New video of prototype : https://vimeo.com/85914466

The prototype is going into manufacturing, there are only 40 places left for pre-orders. It will cost about 100,- euro's ex shipping costs.

Any warranty that after 2 days my 100 euro TOH will still work?

The 100 prototypes are sold out, more will not be made by dirkvl. I'd still buy a qwerty TOH with scandinavian letters (å,ä,ö) should someone make and sell them.

Maybe jolla could use its design, polish it a bit and find some manufacturer.

This kind of keyboard wouldn't be handier than the software one Sailfish OS provides. Other sliders foresee to put Jolla (or the device) horizontal (but Jolla was born vertical...). Well, I'd see a good choice for a physical keyboard a slide'n'rotate one: vertical phone, horizontal keyboard. Should Jolla make it? I don't know. It largely depends on how much money they can invest and which are their priority. They could design it and make it build to a third party. Whatever they do, they'll be unlike ;)

I had both a N900 (horizontal slider), and a Pre 3 (vertical slider), and my favourite keyboard is definitely the Pre 3's. It looks small, but it actually works really well, much better than any on-screen keyboard.

Horizontal slider requires an horizontally designed UI, like maemo's.

Also vertically slided out keyboard can be easily operated one handed and doesn't require both hands.

I used an Nokia E7with sliding keyboard in landscape mode which I didn't really like. On the other hand I loved the 'Backberry-style' design of the Nokia E71. Actually typing on the tiny Blackberry-style E71 was quicker than on the much larger landscape keyboard of the E7. I guess this was mainly due to the well formed keys on the smaller key board.

@misterc I do not want to engage in dispute, but I have to state that for me(and MANY Jolla users) 1.0.4.20 is a leap forward. You can have your opinion about it, but that does not weight more than any other such.

@zlatko 1.0.4.20 made my Jolla start acting up in actual "phone" parts (voice-calling stalls, ofono hangs, telepathy does not find dbus names etc)... yes it stopped rebooting all the time, now I need to reboot it myself. If my N9's modem would work reliable I'd swap back to it and I am already thinking about buying a dumbphone for 30bucks till Jolla releases a stable version of their "stable release"

@chemist I do respect your opinion, I just wanted to say that for me 1.0.4.20 improved the usability of the device substantially. And also for many others as well. But that Jolla team has a lot of work to do is out of question!

@zlatko yes the overall usage improved, just introducing other show stoppers with a so called "stable release" marks something pre beta. Compared to game-development 1.0.4.20 is like the mouse-button does not work in an ego-shooter all for a sudden and restarting the game does not bring it back, not even unplugging the mouse - only rebooting the whole system brings it back - 1.0.3.8 was rebooting the system when mouse or keyboard was used - that is called alpha stage!

not even beta stage

i agree. (i agree is too short to add comment)

1.0.4.20 is a better release than the previous one, not "wasted time" by any means. If you need all android applications and Google play running perfectly out of the box, then you really should sell both your Jollas and stick to an Android phone...

@misterc How exactly does this relate to the suggestion, except that the word "keyboard" appears in your answer? FYI: I have had no problems with the version update and agree with @thisisme: if you want ideal Android support, get yourself an Android device.

I consider NOT having the whole battery-consuming Google mess on my phone a FEATURE. If I wanted that I would have stayed with Android. The Amazon app store is a valid alternative for getting paid apps. BlackBerry users also have to find alternative sources for Android apps, try searching for it on the web.