I think the camera bumps kind of prevent this without turning the phone into a literal brick. Would have to be more like a clamshell/folio type case like with the iPads.

That said the keyboard in OP looks so unbelievably fucking stupid and impractical I can't understand how it made it to production.

Doesn't have to cover the entire back of the camera. Just needs to use magsafe to attach.

I don't think magsafe is strong enough to support the entire phone on a keyboard

I use the MagSafe Apple wallet and often turn is sideways to give myself something to hold while I watch videos in landscape. A keyboard would work in much the same way, in terms of what it needs to support and where it’s being held.

MagSafe supports my 'entire phone' bouncing around in my truck, and hanging on my headboard at night - it's more than strong enough to hold a phone to a keyboard.

I enjoy that your unwritten implication is that your headboard is banging around at night with equal amplitude to your truck.

humblebragging at its finest me thinks

Maybe his truck has a really nice, comfy suspension that doesn’t move much. Maybe he’s humblebragging about his truck :P

Fair and good point!

Is this something that has changed with the newer phones? I have an iPhone 12 pro, and MagSafe barely holds the wireless charging circle to the back of the phone.

Supporting the entire phone is the entire point of Magsafe, what else would you even use it for?

It works great to support the entire weight of the phone on your desk or a dashboard, even when driving a fast car or riding a bike (unless you crash of course). But it's 1-2 orders of magnitude less force than required to resist pulling it out of your pocket.

lightly holding the charger in place well enough to maintain contact yet easily removed if the cable is pulled without damaging cable or device. anything after that is bonus and outside the scope of magsafe's use. the magnets on my desktop multi-device charger do not meet that requirement as they are significantly stronger than Magsafe connections.

That wouldn't be very comfortable at all

I had this as a case for the iPhone 4 (or 5S, can’t remember). Was amazing but very bulky.

The Palm Pre was my dream phone

I’m still upset with Leo Apotheker for killing WebOS at HP. It was our only real shot at a real 3rd platform that could have some legs. It’s hard to comprehend how much damage he was able to do in only 10 months as CEO.

It's wild how well palm worked with gesture and stylus input and ...the games were super fun I think because of directional physical buttons on the devices and you know, no pay to play games

+1

I can’t get over how long it took Apple to adopt the same charging mechanism. It’s depressing how good the Pre phones were and how long it’s taken to get anywhere near close to as good.

> I can’t get over how long it took Apple to adopt the same charging mechanism.

I knew somebody with a Pre and he had to have it replaced two or three times because the charging mechanism kept breaking. It’s fairly common that somebody else will do something “first” but Apple will wait until the technology is mature enough to be reliable.

Mine got a hairline crack in the chassis next to the charging port, but the magnetic charger didn't have the same issue (obviously). There were plenty of issues with the Pre and immediate followups didn't do enough to solve them. That said, it was probably the last really "interesting" phone design I owned.

Still waiting for multi-tasking that works as well as it did on the Pre.

Maybe one day.

For me, the X and the iOS version with it (can't remember which one), with the gesture swiping etc, finally was as good as (even perhaps better than) the Palm Pre

Mine was the Droid 4.

The only complaint I had about it was the MASSIVE bezels. They easily could have made the screen at least another inch bigger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_4#/media/File:Motorola_D...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=M64U0XyLA-o&feat... Palm Pre in 2009 had a magnetic charging / mount thing super similar to what the iPhone only finally got a couple of years ago.. Palm Pre also had the nice card-based UI for killing apps while multitasking -- again something basically iOS only finally got after many years of annoying versions that all sucked compared to the card based mode they use now. webOS used webapps -- which at the time were not great.. but now tons of apps are effectively just webapps. So yea, Palm Pre was uber ahead of its time...

So ahead of its time! It was actually pretty nice to work with as a developer, too. They did some great work making webOS a viable platform. It’s a real shame it didn’t thrive in my opinion; it got a lot of things right.

that and the Sharp Zaurus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus#/media/File:Zauru...

Ah my beloved Zaurus 5500 with the camera card. I still have many grainy photos I took with it. The slide out keyboard was fantastic, and like all devices, it too ran Doom.

You just made me check if I still have my rooting-instructions on my website, from back in the day when I wanted a reference.

Turns out I do:

https://steve.fi/docs/pre/

It was a great phone, although I see on that page I said "not great, not terrible".

Same. I would have considered buying this product and the phone (!!!!) if it would have had a sliding mechanism. I miss all the pre phones. Had 1, 2 and 3. I am not joking, I was faster typing on the pre than on my keyboard since I never learned to use all my fingers to type.

I always loved the LG env2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_enV2_%28VX9100%29

How should they work around covering the camera ?

I got an HTC TyTN once. I hated that phone so much. Keyboard slipped out, which I guess worked. It was the phone that made me religiously stick with Apple all this time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_TyTN

Before that I had a Palm 5 PDA, which I loved. So interesting that you can add features and connectivity and still make the thing suck.

That is interesting, I had a TyTN II and miss it to this day. The keyboard was pure bliss, the software was all there (browsing, messaging, photos, calendar, cool games - everything I now use my iPhone for). It had a nice chunk to it and made a cute sound when you slid the keyboard out. You could even run Android on it thanks to some nice people on XDA.

Yep, had that and a Touch Pro before getting a Pre and then finally (begrudgingly) accepting that there weren't gonna be any more higher-end phones with slide-out keyboards.

I still have an HTC Dream in a drawer somewhere, thinking that someday I'll repurpose it as a bluetooth keyboard for something or other.

I miss my HTC phones

I thought it would be this as well. I dearly miss my 2013 Xperia Mini Pro. But this? Looking at this product gives me wrist pain. The iPhone is about 250g. How can you comfortably hold it from the tip?