I think we have the tech to bring back some of these older cool looking handhelds. The form factor with some more up to date hardware and software would make a killer combo.
The 3rd from last is not old, it’s an fxtec pro 1 and it came out like 2 years ago. I’m using mine to type this. My pro1-x (somewhat the same phone but with more recent parts since snapdragon stopped making 700-series) is supposed to come in the post later this year whenever they finish honoring the crowdfunding.
Like, we do not need to bring it back, it’s already here and it’s running Lineage os 20.
Physical buttons are nice.
The Beepberry and Pocket CHIP are not unlike these, though they have a portrait form factor and a more raw aesthetic. Small, wide LCDs can be had; it’s tiny keyboards that are hard to get. I’ll add that I don’t value tiny keyboards much: it was a netbook keyboard that first made my wrists hurt, and since that time, I need my keyboard to fit my hands far more urgently than to fit in my pocket.
Earlier than these, I have an HP 95LX: a handheld equivalent to a PC-XT, with a 40x16 character mono LCD and one megabyte of battery-backed RAM, with DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 in ROM. The keyboard is made of HP calculator keys, which were often lauded. It would be somewhat promising for a mod, except it’s vintage enough that hacking it up would be a shame.
I have a Psion 5mx and there’s a Debian port for it which is crazy. I’ve been on the fence about installing it for similar reasons.
I’m a huge fan of GPD and Gemini PDA, but there are a lot of handhelds that are from like 2010 (eyeballing) and I think they would work well with more modern hardware and software.
The pinephone with the keybaord attachment seems like it comes close. Though I’ve never tried it.
