I would've definitely guessed early 90s. Hell, the IBM Simon was introduced in 1994.
My very uneducated guess is that it looks like it was meant for the enterprise market, and judging by the way any other piece of enterprise hardware looks even today, design trends are like 10-15 years behind. And since you have to guarantee serviceability and backwards compatibility, the design will be much slower to change, compared to consumer tech.
It will be revived but with biometric sensors to capture more personal data, all of which is fed into a LLM pretending to be a healthcare provider.
"Your blood pressure is high, here's a list of lifestyle interventions, or upgrade to a premium account for access to a healthy recipe database or go Platinum for access to our concierge prescription delivery service. Meanwhile here's an ad for dick pills."
"If you relinquish yourself to a shelter, your pizza sauce will stick to the crust."
They already have these little thumbtack devices that stab into your arm and give you annoying warnings over bluetooth that are only somewhat accurate
Me trying to pull up the bus schedule on my phone, but my fingers are too cold to register on the screen.
Because designing an interface is hard and it's easier to just not do it
i have a car with a touch screen for the radio and it is by far the worst most backwards thing i can imagine putting in a vehicle that can kill people.
also the space-x capsule. no way i'd go up in a spacecraft where i can't "reroute the portside bus to the aft solar array!" or something like that.
not just physical buttons but i demand panels that can be easily removed and wires swapped around
imagine apollo 13 but with a single touchscreen and welded panels
The thing I do like about some touchscreen cars is that they get more steering wheel buttons
in '09 I had this slide out physical QWERTY keyboard phone. like you turned the phone on its side and split the phone like you were splitting a deck of cards in half.
kinda like this one. https://i0.wp.com/www.gottabemobile.com/wp-content/uploads/Samsung-Stratosphere-keyboard1.jpg
shit was actually badass for browsing and texting. afk brb fuk u 2 lol l8r
I'm surprised there isn't a market for a case with built-in slideout keyboard, I'd hate to have to choose between physical keyboard and rest-of-phone-good.
My first smartphone was a second-hand Motorola Droid A855 that I got in like 2012 (I think it was about 2-3 years old by the time I got it). That keyboard was great and I hated how smartphones were slowly moving away from it.
i had one of those too and i loved it so much
i honestly thought all phones would end up like that and was very disappointed that it was basically one of the only models to exist
We used to maintain those at my last job, they are still used in big grocery chains for inventory purposes
God I wish I used this for inventory/ordering purposes instead of a shitty samsung tablet with a dodgy half baked web app
Plus some models have ring scanners :
Show
which makes your job cooler than it is
A few years ago the grocery I worked for got rid of their inventory scan guns that ran on Windows CE and used TinyTERM. They were rugged as shit and it was impossible to lose your progress if you took the scanner into a WiFi dead zone somewhere in the bowels of the stockroom. Then at some point they switched to these shitty Android-based ones where everything is done on a web browser. You needed to be extra cautious to make sure it was actually communicating with the WiFi and remote server, or else whatever you're scanning would not get counted/ordered.
honestly id take this shit even with a touch screen, just wrap my arm in that shit
We used to use these at work. They suck to type on. We upgraded to the touchscreen smartphone types, and they’re much better.
i imagine many factory workers are still living this cool techno timeline. lucky them!
Meh. With my phone I can type with one hand while my other arm does whatever.
Look at Mr Fancy Plunger Pants over here. Got money and room for a dedicated toilet unblocking majigger. Probably take big poops just so you can satisfiedly unblock the pooper again without using your hands.
Some of us just get our hand in there and get the job done, when my toilet blocked regularly I just used a bin bag as arm protection 'cause it's what we had. Can't all live in a big plunger castle like yerself yer majesty.
Sometimes when you need a plunger, life only gives you a plastic bag.
Things like this would make your arm all sweaty and youll end up having weird tan lines if you decided to touch grass.
I want one
