Mecha Comet is a modular Linux handheld coming soon to Kickstarter for $159
  • plm00@lemmy.ml
    22·
    4 days ago

    I’m intrigued. And although I read the article, I’m not entirely sure who or what this is for. It’s cool, but… what?

    • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
      41·
      4 days ago

      I feel like this would fit in some unexpected areas of mobile computing. Music, interfacing with other equipment (e.g. industrial computing), or other places where people might normally take a full laptop where that’s kind of overkill.

      I’m not really sure, and I kind of wish I had a need for one.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
      31·
      3 days ago

      I think it’s for the Hacker News crowd that’s always clamoring for smaller phones, or phones with a physical keyboard. Potentially for parents to give to their young children, to be able to contact them without getting them addicted to screens right away.

      Not sure how big those markets are though.

    • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
      21·
      3 days ago

      I feel like if the people who make raspberry pis made a phone (or phone components, mainly the board) I would buy the hell outta that bitch. This sounds kiiinda like that but idk that I actually trust it.

  • Kajika@lemmy.ml
    353·
    4 days ago

    yet an other hardware from 10+ years ago. here we have an ARM Cortex-A53 from what it seems to be 2012. Maybe it is actually compatible with OpenGL 3…

    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
      61·
      3 days ago

      Our beloved consoles from the 80s and 90s were built with off the shelf parts, this is no different. Custom hardware in a niche market would lead nowhere.

      • 737@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        41·
        3 days ago

        this comparison is really bad. consoles built with 6502s could get away with it, since everything they ran were games crafted in assembly to fit the timings to the last clock cycle. this product is supposed to run modern graphical software.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      2·
      3 days ago

      I would pay more than 1000$ at this point for a modern high DPI open device with mobile internet compatibility and all drivers in mainline kernel. Just give me good hardware, I can handle the software on my on, tank you 🤭

      • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        If you want all drivers in the mainline kernel, you clearly cannot handle the software on your own. The reason why linux phones suck are the drivers that are either bad or don’t exist. The desktop (or palmtop I guess) environments are pretty usable if you run it on something with good drivers (like QEMU - my favorite phone).

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
          1·
          2 days ago

          Yea, I did not phrase it well enough 😂 I just don’t want to be supervised by these large phone OS giants, because they think it is more convenient

          What do you mean with QEMU? Are you running a Linux VM on your android phone?

          • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 day ago

            It was a joke about the fact that PostmarketOS considers only QEMU a “main” device. Every real phone is in the “community” section because they’re too buggy. So the only good device to run that OS on is a virtual one running inside your desktop.

  • kehet@sopuli.xyz
    7·
    2 days ago

    Well that looks cool. I just hope I would have use for such device.

    I wonder how they plan to keep updating this Mechanix OS after initial sales slow down

    • dorumon@lemm.ee
      5·
      2 days ago

      It’s going to be just like my pocket chip and die quickly after in terms of software support. Where I had to run my own hacks and also run archive debian repositories for the hardware itself only for the flash to die a year afterwards. I can say though it was the coolest device I had and hacking it was really neat especially with the UI and scaling apps on the device.

  • niucllos@lemm.ee
    4·
    4 days ago

    Would love something like this for field notes, though for my uses a eink screen would be preferable. Hopefully this or the equivalent takes off and we can start getting fun variables in the future!

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
    304·
    3 days ago

    I wonder who this is made for?

    The article calls it a “smartphone sized pocket computer”, but that describes smartphones too; they already are pocket computers. And they’ve had decades of design and development behind them.

    So… This device has a tiny touchscreen, and a keyboard, rather than having the whole thing being a touchscreen. So instead it has a modular bottom half… Which… Sounds like it’s trying to solve a problem that would’ve been a problem in like… The 90s, maybe, but has been solved by using… A touchscreen that can change the type of input it is flexibly, like smartphones do.

    It can’t call, like a smartphone, despite being a smartphone sized device. It has USB A 2.0 sockets and an Ethernet socket… Which makes it once again sound incredibly out-dated, like a device found in a time capsule, because USB C is smaller and faster than USB A 2.0, and can potentially be used for damn near anything. Which includes connecting to the Internet.

    Its battery looks very weak. Its CPU looks very weak. It has a tiny amount of RAM, and a tiny amount of storage. It is outclassed by any affordable, midrange smartphone, at nearly the same price too (if you avoid big brand names).

    • EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml
      132·
      3 days ago

      This device has a tiny touchscreen, and a keyboard, rather than having the whole thing being a touchscreen.

      That’s awesome. I still miss my Blackberry Passport (keyboard and large 1:1 screen).

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        211·
        3 days ago

        Tiny keyboards were a nightmare. There’s a reason why the Blackberry failed. You might like it, but then you’re part of a minority.

        • EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 days ago

          Wide display: perfect for reading A4 documents

          keyboard: nicer to type. Also, the passport was as wide as, well … , a passport so it is a pretty decently sized keyboard which isn’t comparable to the tiny Q10.

          The passport was never meant to be a generic for the masses device. It is a beautiful specialized tool.

          • Tattorack@lemmy.world
            37·
            3 days ago

            Yeah they did. It was a pretty major factor. The moment touchscreen phones began to exist, Blackberry became past-tense.

            • kadup@lemmy.world
              6·
              3 days ago

              I’d say their software limitations are the reason they failed, not the keyboard. In fact, people really liked the final BlackBerry devices with Android and a keyboard, but at that point the company was already gone.

              But while iPhones were at the boom of Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, iBeer and using Skype, and Google’s Android looked like ass but already had ad-infested versions of the same titles, BlackBerry had… corporate messaging? A really robust email app, I guess?

    • Michal@programming.dev
      92·
      3 days ago

      Full-size usb, Ethernet and keyboard mean you can use it as a Linux computer, install arbitrary debian packages, run shell scripts, python scripts, and you don’t need any dongles. This is the differential factor. You can’t do the same on a smartphone, and it’s not supposed to be a smartphone. Why would you need a separate sim card when you can simply tether Internet from your phone?

      I get that this device isn’t for you, but there are people who don’t want to write and maintain apps through apps stores and simply want to copy simple scripts into a small device they can have with them. It’s a niche market and good for them for trying to fill that niche.

      I wonder what they use for charging port if not usb c…

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        62·
        3 days ago

        You can do all that with USB C and a touch keyboard. There is no good reason under the sun to make a device that is this dated in concept.

        Whatever the market is they’re trying to fill, it’ll be so extremely niche that this product is already a failure. It’s not the first time some kind of ultra niche product from kickstarter failed before launch because except for a small handful even cared.

          • Mikina@programming.dev
            4·
            2 days ago

            I can do that and more on my Pinephone running Kali Nethunter. While it’s mostly a gimmick with awfull battery life, I’ve already used it a few times mostly in regards to wifi pentesting for my cyber-sec job, i.e when going to lunch onsite and you notice a new wifi AP you didn’t see when inside the office you’re working on.

            And since it has an USB-C, I can simply plug in a dock with two USB-As, Ethernet, PD and HDMI, to turn it into a full-fledged Kali desktop.

              • Mikina@programming.dev
                1·
                1 day ago

                I tried it like a year ago, maybe more, and it wasn’t ready for that. The battery life was awfull (which was a SW issue of the OS not being able to stand-by properly), and accepting calls wasn’t really reliable. It’s more of a gimmick and great as a side-phone, but I wouldn’t use it as a daily driver.

                But the situation might’ve changed.

    • mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world
      111·
      3 days ago

      For people who like a concept more than practicality. There’s maybe a handful use cases that this specific device fits in that isn’t covered better by existing tech, but I guarantee if that thing actually gets kickstarted and arrives severely delayed in several years, it’ll show up in a couple YouTube videos with people sort of uncertain what to use it for, and in the vast majority of cases it’ll end up in some drawers after having been used a few hours tops.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        4·
        3 days ago

        My thoughts exactly. I’ve seen several such devices already, probably the most expensive and over-designed one being the Apple VR, and it’s always the same story.

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
    11·
    3 days ago

    I would really love a return to a concept where you have a tablet that docks into a full size laptop form factor. Even better if the dock can have a graphics card.

    • abaddon@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 days ago

      Agree. Sometimes I want a tablet, sometimes a laptop but I don’t need or want 2 separate devices of that size. I recall quite a few Android projects (Mirabook, Project Linda) that would use a phone with a laptop dock but I’d prefer a phone as a standalone device and a secondary, larger & more powerful, device that can have multiple forms.

        • abaddon@lemmy.world
          2·
          3 days ago

          Was just using that as an example. It would be great to see a Linux device with this capability. I have played around with a few Linux phones and convergence was a feature that received attention so I think there’s hope.

          • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
            2·
            3 days ago

            really feel framework is perfect for this. Make the screen a tablet. Have the additional graphics and hard drive on the base. Actually the microsoft surface book was basically what I want but with a company that sells it with linux and supports it with their company distro.

  • Irelephant@lemm.ee
    131·
    3 days ago

    It looks cool and all, but its probably going to have like 400mb of ram and an rp2040 like every other linux handheld device.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
    6·
    4 days ago

    If that keyboard module isn’t extremely securely attached on there, I can 100% guarantee it is breaking in my pocket.

    Would have much preferred if they were going to have just one base unit with keyboard. Other modules could fit over that.

  • justblackcoffeeplease@lemmy.ca
    2·
    16 hours ago

    Hopefully gphoto2 will run in this. It would make a less bulky intervalometer than the one I built with a raspberry pi and an attachable display.

  • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
    401·
    3 days ago

    I see a lot of negativity in the comments. And yeah, this thing probably isn’t something I’m going to get, but at least they are trying something that isn’t a generic rectangle of glass like all the others. I miss the days of fun gadgets.

    • humble peat digger@lemm.eeEnglish
      112·
      3 days ago

      I like the generic rectangle block of glass.
      Don’t understand why they insist on a physical keyboard.

      • DeaDvey@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 days ago

        I much prefer physical keyboards and find it difficult to use touchscreen, so a mobile, qwerty keyboard sounds great to me.

      • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
        2·
        3 days ago

        I don’t mind it, but I also don’t hate that people are trying something new! Maybe it fails, but maybe it’s awesome!

      • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.comEnglish
        52·
        3 days ago

        i am personally sick of shiny rectangles. physical keyboards are the buttons on your cars dash instead of the shiny rectangle on your car’s dash.

        • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
          6·
          3 days ago

          Cars’ buttons need to be used while preferably not looking at them, that’s a pretty different situation to a smartphone

          • Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml
            1·
            2 days ago

            Also, I can somewhat type eyes-free on a smartphone keyboard because of the combination of autocorrect and my fingers remembering where the touch points are relative to the screen

          • netvor@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 days ago

            Being able to use a keyboard without looking at it is a good thing.

            Only thing that makes it “different situation” for smartphone is that they just don’t have the keyboards. (And some of us kinda accepted that…)

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 days ago

    What I like about this is that I could theorhetically install a non-QWERTY keyboard instead of being locked to such an inefficient layout. Yes, eventually you can learn to touch type, but learning it would be nice to have the keys since it will be a nonstandard layout at that size & when you hand it off to other folks, it’d be completely unexpected to hit q & get a '.

  • Solrac@lemmy.world
    23·
    3 days ago

    3gb RAM? 32gb emmc? This feels a bit like a raspberry pi project. Up the specs at least 6gb to at least no[t look like yet another microdeck with emulators, please… I like the concept, but as is, it leaves plenty to be desired

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
      4·
      3 days ago

      Netbooks need to come back with modern hardware.

      If I need an ultra-portable computer one in a usable form factor would be amazing.

  • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    3 days ago

    Looks nice and I’d like it even more, had it an USB-C port with display output.
    But even in the current configuration it’s a nice gadget at a reasonable price point.
    4 GB RAM is not exactly great for a kind of desktop computer (even with Linux), but using this thing as a server with a built-in keyboard and display would have saved me some trouble I faced with unresponsive RaspberryPis.

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
    36·
    4 days ago

    Gross. Why would they launch on a scam platform like kickstarter?

    Let me know if they launch on crowdsupply

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 days ago

      Funny story. LG made something with a similar concept about 10 years ago and it never really took off. The LG G5 was a modular smart phone that was supposed to have a bunch of cool modules, but they never came to fruition.

      I had one, but mostly because I loved having a swappable battery. Never had to charge my phone, I would just have a spare battery charging on my desk and I would swap it out before I left the house.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        2 days ago

        Jolla had similar concept too at 2013. I had one and back then it was really, really nice phone. Maybe not in a sense that flagship models from big vendors were, but I really enjoyed the UI and modular options was a huge selling point at least for myself. Then they started to work with a tablet which failed on pretty much all fronts and the whole company practically disappeared.