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A comment on Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars. Parent comment

Re:Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars by Rohansi on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @01:50AM (#50161849)
Why did you buy it then? There are systems on the market still that have none of these issues.
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Re:Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars by watwut on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @02:31AM (#50162127)
Which ones? I would happily use the phone I had 10 years ago. It was smaller, fit into a pocket better and literally the only meaningful thing that got better in between is camera.

And if I go further into history, I loved my phone with physical querty keyboard (nokia). There is no such thing on the market now, but I would love physical keyboard again.

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Re:Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars by xethos on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @03:09AM (#50162376)
> I would happily use the phone I had 10 years ago

> There is no such thing on the market now

Good news, the ~12-year-old BlackBerry Q20 is back, and shipping, [0] with an updated motherboard. It's a real product, not vaporware; I have two. It has a headphone jack, a small form-factor, removable micro-SD card slot, and a battery that takes little more than a guitar pick and #0 Philips screwdriver to replace.

Parts are cheap as hell as well, with a new screen costing under $25USD, and replacement keyboards under $30.

There's multiple clean sheet designs [1,2] of similar devices as well.

Though I expect them to be treated like fun little runabout cars: made for (typically young) people that can't justify the cost, leaving nobody to buy them, who then bemoan their discontinuation... due to poor sales

[0] https://zinwa.com/product/q25-full-device/

[1] https://zinwa.com/product/p26-full-device-pre-order/

[2] https://www.clicksphone.com/ca/communicator

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Re:Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars by M95D on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @06:46AM (#50164206)
He said "Nokia". Nokia had usable keyboards, not that tiny BB thing where you need child fingers type with.

  https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e70-review-96.php
  https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e90-1857.php
  https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5730_xpressmusic-review-385.php
I had the E70 for many years. The keyboard was amazing, even better than the E90.
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Re:Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars by Rohansi on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @08:16AM (#50165195)
The comment I replied to was specifically referring to a laptop.

But on phones, the base model Pixel phones (6 inch) are a pretty good size balance IMO. I would not go bigger than that but it's probably very dependent on things like hand size. And I honestly don't want a physical keyboard on a phone now because swipe/gesture typing is so much better than pressing tiny buttons, even if they had physical feedback.

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