Get a larger screen and a keyboard (bluetooth typically), and you'll still find you're fighting the platform.

- Memory management means that whatever application you're using at any given moment can vanish, with all its user state.

- Applications are crippled versions of full-desktop variants, where they exist at all. E.g., FennecFox vs. the Firefox browser. Support for user-empowering extensions is limited.

- You. Will. Not. Have. Root. Some devices are rootable. Many are not. This means that whole sections of the OS are not available to you.

- Information is siloed into applicationd databases (inaccessable on the device, since You. Will. Not. Have. Root. --- or worse, maintained on some distant cloud server.)

- The OS itself is not upgradable by you. Android device vendors often provide absolutely no post-purchase OS updates.

- Even power kits are very third-class citizens. Termux, The Only Android App That Does Not Precisely Suck[TM], is useful and powerful but its 1,400 packages are only a minuscule fraction of those available on a full Linux system (Debian contains over 60,000 packages), and are limited in functionality as You. Will. Not. Have. Root.

Numerous affordances and capabilities are simply missing or buggy as all hell.

Using an ebook reader, as an example, with an external keyboard, I cannot enter a space character into a search field as that scrolls the screen rather than editing the search dialogue. Just one of many, many, many cuts in a death by thousands.

Source: Have used Android for over a decade, tablets for over five years.

You think it's the tiny monitor, but it's really the primitive UI designed for caveman-style point-and-grunt. I've been using a GPD Micro PC extensively over the past few months, which is equipped with a 6" screen, but also - critically - a touchpad and physical thumb keyboard. Guess what, I can do programming, CAD, image editing, the works - everything you can do on a larger machine.

The Micro PC proves that we were sold a myth; that dumbed-down UIs were a necessary evil to enjoy computers in our pockets. They aren't. Pocket sized laptops work amazingly.

The apotheosis of the netbook? How does it perform with external keyboard, mouse and monitor?

Edit: I've been a fan of the netbook concept since well before the term was coined, when the Toshiba Portegé first came out. But my experiences with them, like everyone else, were disappointing. I'd love it if these new units had good performance.

I mean, it's a quad core mobile Intel with 8 gigabytes. It feels snappy. It runs KDE Plasma. Thermals aren't spectacular, and you won't be running any AAA games on it, but it's vastly more capable than the netbooks of yore. I tend to keep it throttled to 6 watts, which means I can keep the fan off all the time.

That's interesting to me because I've been seeing some people impatient for the PinePhone external keyboard, but I've felt strong doubts I'd use one much.

You might be right. Having also spent time with the Cosmo Communicator, I can vouch that a phone with a keyboard isn't the same thing as a phone-sized laptop. Apart from the hostile platform (which hopefully wouldn't be an issue on the PinePhone), two aspects that make the phone less practical for desktop software are the extremely high aspect ratio, and the lack of any sort of mouse input beyond poking at the screen. These things significantly compromise the desktop experience.

However, I will also say that a touch-type keyboard on a phone is still awesome, and I will certainly be buying a PinePhone+keyboard when it comes out. I live in forlorn hope for the day I can evict Android from my life entirely (the Micro PC does not, alas, make phone calls).

Thanks for spelling out some issues.

Yeah, the inherent fatness of fingers problem. And the lack of buttons on those fingers other-problem.

Looking at the resolutions, 1280x720 vs 1440x720, I would have just expected the phone experience not to feel terribly different. Of course it remains to be seen how much the PinePhone software adapts to landscape in wake of the keyboards coming.

Tiny monitor, obnoxious keyboard. I haven't enjoyed typing on a phone since I reluctantly (that word took me 5 tries) set down my Lumia 920 Windows phone.

Also my mouse is (insert big number) times more precise than my index finger.

I use a NexDock from time to time for this; some of my Galaxy S20's stock software scales pretty well to a full-size display as they expect you to use one.

I don't think I'd make my phone my primary machine despite this until Linux phones are daily-driver ready for me though. The mobile OS is still too limiting.

(That and while the NexDock is serviceable, its touchpad is awful. Good enough to use occasionally, but I wouldn't want to be stuck with it as my main machine.)

The existence of the tablet shows that it's not the device size but rather the app experience that's the limiting factor.

I've tried using an iPad but it's no match for the power, control and flexibility of a full desktop/laptop device, and the larger iPad has an even bigger screen than some smaller notebooks.

> Most things built for mobile are "light" versions.

The good sites are :)

The not so good ones "force" you to download an app with no alternative and require obtrusive permissions even though all you want to know is the answer to a quick question.