The Pinephone with it’s keyboard: a Qtek 9000 for the year 2023?

Last Updated on October 23, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

The Qtek 9000 was released in 2005:

• We where happy with this device but not in the year 2023.
• Since Google killed the feature to write to the external SD card after Android 4.4 we suffer not to have new devices anymore which can do this.
• But where can we find a new device which can do this?

The Raspberry Pad 5 looks great:

• but can we do more with it than using it as a 3 D printer display with Octoprint and Octodash?
• We still do not know the answer although we have tried hard to find one.
• If it is possible to do more we did we did nof find any evidence that this device can be used as Qtek 9000 for the year 2023.
• On the contrary we failed to this date to install Raspberry Pi OS on this device and we do not know the reason.

The PP & PP keyboard looks similar to a Qtek 9000

• But to get the function keys and the special characters to be supported it requires postmarketOS SXMO installed.
• We can then test it with Abiword and Gnumeric.
• If the PP keyboard works great then it is eventually worth to customize LibreOffice for the Pinepone.
• Without a keyboard which supports all the characters does it make any sense?
• Eventually it is worth also to test the Rii i4 or x8 mini with 2.4 GHz usb dongle with the Pinephone.
• It offers more keys than the PP keyboard and the functions are more easily accessible.
• With Bluetooth keyboards and mice we did not find users who could convince us to test those further on the Pinephone.
• We think it is also possible to solder a connector for a power bank to the POGO pins of the Pinephone to attach a large power bank so that it runs longer than a view hours.
• But we do not know it this works for charging the power bank as well.

• With all the information we have put together for the PP with PP keyboard and Abiword, Gnumeric and LibreOffice we think it is worth testing if we can use it as a Qtek 9000 in the year 2023.
• We managed to edit Abiword files on a Ubuntu PC which we created on the Pinephone and then saved to an SD card.
• This is one of the rare mobile devices which can write files to the external SD card which then can be processed further on a PC.
• Google killed the feature to write to the external SD card for most applications after Android 4.4 and we suffer since then not to have it anymore.
• We do not want to sync all our files to Google Drive or to our private cloud for privacy reasons.
• An SD card is a great thing for privacy, it only needs to be encrypted and that is it.
• We prefer a solution which does not require synchronization.
• There are alternative SBCs based on Pi’s which are eventually easier to handle for users as the device described here.
• But the Pi devices which we discussed in our journal and we managed to get running are bigger and do not fit in a pocket as easy as a Pinephone with Pinephone keyboard.