SuperPaintMan
Absolutely, I'm in the middle of Saskatchewan where it can get down to -40 and this was my biggest gripe with some of my old iPhones. Weirdly enough my BlackBerries (including my Key2!) managed a bit better. Only major issue I noticed was that capacity would rise when coming into a warmer environ. The Titan seems to be faring pretty well so far this winter, but it also is more battery then phone.
Was always funny walking in and having my phone restart, just to shutdown though.
Still Android, but you keep the HW Kepboard and the batterylife and build on it is insane. Not nearly as clean as stock or the Key2, but much more freedom respecting.
I was using it way back when you could use their Java Applet to upload your music. Had my entire library on it!
The bigger issue with adding more keys to the mix is that with heavier switches (35g+) the amount of work/stress done by the hand can be more then a traditional keyboard. But even with heavier switches it's often faster then having to move your hands around the physical board. And once you factor in things like combos you can just map End to something like QW or whatever works for you. Programmable input devices are _really_ weird!
[0] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rRS_TOYuIQQ/XhRERox3moI/AAAAAAABE...
My solution to this is to just use O-Rings on Chocs to soften the bottom out. It's less jarring and gives a bit of mush to a bottom out instead of a hard hit. To some this is heresy though.
That being said, if you're deadset on the feel of a tactile, it's an option.
No worries, we spend all day using these devices, the fact that we're not using them in a highly configurable fashion pains me. Make technology work for you, not the other way around
Depends on how you define 'build' here, I'm assuming you mean come to what would become the final design for GergoPlex. That took about a year and a half, my first two designs (Gergo and Georgi respectively) sought to improve on my issues with the ErgoDox (mostly size, PCB-forehead, height, thumb-cluster). After a year of using Gergo and diving into QMK and a failed attempt at picking up stenography, I came up with the idea for a more chord-orientated layout. It didn't take long to get working hardware (as it was a reduction of an existing design), but the layout took about two weeks before everything had settled into it's final place. I did a bit of a write-up over on the blog of how I ended up dailying GergoPlex from a full size 104 [1] and the slow descent into preprocessor madness [2] to make the Combo decorators work. The weird part was tuning QMK so combos like 'we' wouldn't misfire while typing and analyzing my Vim usage to find comfortable places for frequently used chords. (Such as JK for :, WE or UI for Esc, NM for Enter, XC for -, M< for _, etc)
>get used to the layout
At every transitional step I'd say maybe a week? The harder part was finding a keymap that worked for me. But I started with a Sun-Style layout on the ErgoDox and slowly adpated it as I moved to smaller boards. Control is on 'A' (and ';') on GergoPlex for that reason, and the symbols layers are fairly similar. Honestly, just using it in a active chat server for a few hours was enough to get me 90% of the way there.
Every users needs are going to be different, and their layout should match that (it's _why_ you get a programmable keyboard after all!). How you get there is a fiddly endeavour involving lots of flashing and tweaking, but you end up with something ergonomic and deeply personal!
[1] https://blog.gboards.ca/2020/01/weird-keyboards-programmable...
[2] https://blog.gboards.ca/2020/02/adventures-in-obscure-c-feat...
Layout: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rRS_TOYuIQQ/XhRERox3moI/AAAAAAABE...
GergoPlex: https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergoplex
Although being able to load GSIs on the Titan feels amazing!
Add in the extra shenanigans that is the state of air cargo and different routes opening/closing and it's a very strange time to be trying to manage worldwide shipments.
I'm still dailying my Key2 and have a UniHertz Titan setup ready to go for when it dies. It's not perfect, but it beats typing on glass :)
Needless to say, it's been a few months since this was posted and I've doubled down on the usefulness of chords/combos and overloaded layouts with GergoPlex. Compared to the Gergo I was using before, the ergonomic gains are immense :)
(And Mods, can you remove the mobile bit on the link?)
Some of us are excited to see how systems such as StarLink develop, maybe bringing decent rural access to the network is in the cards.
Next time you make a page that requires 10Mb of assets before loading, please remember there are people dealing with terrible connections. I know my first 100mbps connection was a godsend.
https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/master-the...
When stroking a chord you can have 6+ keys held down easily. I design and write firmware for QMK powered writers/ergonomic keyboards, and NKRO is absolutely vital if you don't want to resort to serial devices [1]. Plover uses this technique to allow for use of gaming keyboards as a low cost stenographic writer powered by FOSS.
Love having a physical keyboard, and will gladly give up some screen size for a much comfier typing experience. That and the BlackBerry Hub is amazing and actually makes managing all my communication in a day much more effective. (Global shortcuts, gestured text navigation, a control key, etc):
At least Hub can be installed on other Android devices, for me a unified inbox is a killer feature.
In short, you nailed it. But forgot to mention abusing the power that QMK gives you for reducing reach/key stretch.
Just need to ditch character based input, it's not easy though.