The next tragedy of the Pinephone which was first glorified & then demonized is it’s keyboard – PETER GAMMA (Director & Physiologist), MEDITATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE SWITZERLAND (MRIS)

Last Updated on July 7, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org

For me personally it is almost scandalous that Pine64 has pulled the Pinephone keyboard from the shop.
I invested a lot of time in installing LibreOffice on the Pinephone.
It is currently not usable on the screen, but could be adapted.
One option would be to remove the menues and use it with keyboard shortcuts to make it usable.
Then we have Abiword and Gnmeric.
Both require the Pinephone keyboard to work with.
There is basically no altnative to the Pinephone keyboard.
Wibble tested the iGo Bluetooth keyboard for 30 min and said it worked without issues. But is too big for my purpose.
Then jackfish installed Word97 on the Pinephone.
There is series of 3 introduction videos available.If you look at these, I came to the conclusion that Word 97 is still a great application in the year 2024, at least for the Pinephone.
It did a lot of review work on my personal website www.petergamma.org to use the Pinephone for writers. You can find it under the category “Linux Pinephone”

But if Pine64 pulls the Pinephone keyboard from the market the Pinephone is basically not usable for writers anymore.
This is a pity.
There are issues with the Pinephone keyboard. But there are work arounds how to resolve this.
Just to pull the Pinephone keyboard from the market before having an alternative is really scandalous for me personally after all the hard work I did with the Pinephone.
With all the knowledge which is available, the Pinephone Keyboard would be a big advantage for writers.
It makes it similar handy as the QTEK 9000, a device which was my all day companion for many years.
The Pinephone with the Pinephone keyboard would be a contemporary replacement for the QTEK 9000 which I haven’t found for me personally to this date.
But if Pine64 pulls the Pinephone keyboard from the marked, this makes me retreat from the Pinephone. There are alternatives on the market which are similar or even superior.
Especially how they deal with costumers, for instance based on the Raspberry Pi CM4.
Reprinted from the Pine64 forum