The original reason for this was that I didn't want to spend all that time getting pass-through charging to work, so for charging the keyboard needs to come off.
But this "quick release" design has the advantage that you can use the phone without keyboard when that's advantageous, e.g. when I want to type really quietly while in bed.
This also gives me a direct comparison between physical and virtual keyboard, that you usually don't get on a pure keyboard phone. And I have to say, typing on the screen is a PAIN compared to the physical keyboard.
and the ability to customize what’s in those top two rows would be amazing.
On a similar note, sometime a year ago I spotted a guy using a Q10 at a shopping center in LA. Had a quick chat which was fun.
As someone who is on the other side of that conversation a lot, I do appreciate it whenever someone asks me about that weird thing I have in my hands ;)
I got this a lot more when I had it in copper/wood (top part was wood filament, bottom part copper filament), but I only have these colors in PLA, which is not durable at all. So I switched to the plain-black PETG and now people don't notice it any more. I'm considering reprinting it in transparent PETG.
I get 55 WPM without errors on the physical keyboard, compared to 45 WPM on the touch keyboard where I also have a significant amount of typos.
But tbh, typing speed is not the main reason. With the physical keyboard, I am much more accurate. I can use key combinations like CTRL+A/X/C/V (the microphone button is mapped to CTRL). There is an alternate mode (activated by pressing both shift keys at the same time) that remaps WASD as cursor keys, which makes e.g. selecting text (SHIFT + Cursor key) much easier. Also I can type while walking and not looking at the phone. And don't get me started about how much of a difference it is when I use a command line, e.g. with SSH.
Yeah, all of the keyboard phones on the market are ancient and/or total crap in every regard but their keyboard and/or super expensive. Some of them are all three at the same time (looking at you Planet Computers and F(x)tec!).
I believe I might have the most up-to-date and highest specced keyboard phone currently on the planet ;)
there is 100％ a niche market.
There totally is, as is proven by Unihertz still existing. But I fear, the keyboard market is a little fragmented, and just a handful of devices won't really capture it. People like side sliders, top sliders or portrait candy bar,. They might want a large or a small phone. They might like privacy/secure phones or hacker phones, or just cheap phones with a keyboard and nothing else. Or maybe a flagship phone with all bells and whistles and a keyboard...
The Fairberry is adaptable to pretty much any phone on the market (as long as it supports external keyboards). Foldables might be challenging though ;)
But that allows you to use any phone you like with a keyboard that anyone can make for ~€50, or maybe €100 if you get someone to do the soldering/printing for you.
I made a FOSS physical keyboard for my Fairphone 4 ( feddit.de )
Github link: https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry...