I'd say purchase a folding phone. It's great.

It doesn't address this editing issue at all. It somewhat attempts to address multi-tasking, but this thread is specifically about how poor the text editing experience is, and I'd like to hear how a folding phone fixes that?

I have an iPad and even there without a mouse plugged in, the editing experience is poor.

You're correct. It isn't a direct solution. For the most part, it makes the selection experience easier, which then makes the editing experience easier.

But I wouldn't underestimate how big a difference it is. One difference between a folding phone and an iPad, is that I can reach every part of my screen with my thumbs still in their resting position. It feels a lot more ergonomic to have an 8 inch 4:3 screen than a larger 16:10 screen that requires hands gymnastics to touch type.

Hold to select word. Drag to extend selection. Drag pops up the edit menu by default, which takes little screen real estate and zero additional clicks to do a cut/copy. Lastly, a cut/copy automatically puts the snippet as the top recommendation on my auto complete bar on the keyboard. So paste doesn't need triggering the edit menu again.

Samsung doesn't have a double tap experience. So it removes that ambiguity.

I have the stubbiest fingers I know and I type a lot ; as my HN profile bears witness. So I have heavily user-tested this experience that I claim to love so much.

Shocker! touch is not the best at complex and precise input. But it’s great for general purpose use and buttons. Problem is we all at some point in our day, week, month need to do something complex on the touch device, which becomes a challenging task and experience.

The new iPhone is 6.7 inches so nearly there?

Although they used the 'Pocket' brand for the Pocket 3, it is really a GPD MicroPC 2. The original MicroPC was 6 inches and is an even better candidate for "phone sized laptop". The crazy thing is that it's perfectly usable and much more productive than a phone - if it could make phone calls and had the same sensor suite as a smartphone, it would be superior along every axis.

Oh wow! I remember the 1st and 2nd Gen.! The 3rd one is so nice! I don’t need one any soon, but it looks like I’d love to have one later in the future. I’m very curious what would the next gens look like.

I found even better laptop, if you don’t need any extra slots (most of the time I don’t):

GPD P2 Max 2022. The world's smallest Ultrabook: https://gpd.hk/gpdp2max2022

As a bit of a GPD fanboi I have both a pocket 2 and a pocket max. When I was a server admin, pocket 2 went everywhere with me in a pelican case. That was just this side of too bulky to carry without noticing.

Pocket max in the pelican was just on the other side of that threshold.

The benefit of the pocket 2 is the full windows/linux installation alongside the usable qwerty keyboard.

I don’t think screen size is the limiting factor when editing, but the lack of a convenient keyboard. I’ve edited quite large texts with a Bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone. Currently have a Nuphy air 75 and keychron k15 pro, small sized, mechanical, ergonomic Bluetooth keyboards, both make editing pretty acceptable.

To be honest, I haven’t even been able to make a tablet really work for me as a serious laptop replacement for any halfway serious office productivity work. Except for a very short trip I bring a laptop because otherwise I’ll run into something I have trouble doing that I need to do.

True, but i feel the same way about laptops. For true productivity i need at least one big display, so will usually dock it with an external display, keyboard and mouse. Funny thing is that the modern iPads connected to an external display gives more or less the same experience as a laptop (as long as you're not programming...)

I have a multi-display desktop. I accept I’m not going to have full capabilities if I’m not at home. For travel an external display on an iPad is a nonstarter.

But then you need a table or some sort of surface to put the keyboard on, and then I might as well use my laptop if I have it. I want better editing for when I'm standing in line at the grocery store with one hand free.

I have a keyboard that I've attached a guitar strap to, in order to be able to type while standing, without a table to rest the keyboard on.

You reinvented...the keytar.

I miss the Sidekick, myself. Was the perfect device for writing while standing. Physical keyboard and a big-ish screen, with the form of a modern smartphone.

The swivel design made finding a decent case tough though. And there were few apps.

Which was an influence on the first Android device, the HTC Dream. Swivel keyboard AND a trackball. It was pretty cool but unfortunately didn't catch on.

I love the concept... but in that price range, I'm no longer comfortable just carrying it around with me, which partially negates the reason for getting it.

Given the (really cool) KVM module with HDMI input and USB keyboard/mouse output, it really feels like an enterprise datacenter product.

Sadly, the .hk kills it. I can't even look at the page, my corp network geoip blocks China's IP addresses completely.

Corp would never let a Chinese created device on network.