it is rather amusing how people can text on their phones without a gripe but the moment you make it look like a real keyboard still keeping its form factor… ppl get bent outta shape. doesnt make any sense to me… like how in rhode island, people complain about a 20m drive. “you want me to go WHERE? you better put gas in my tank for this road trip!” yes RI is a tiny potato chip crumb on the map, but it still never made sense to me.
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Well, those phones have even smaller keyboards. They were designed for thumb tabbing. However, I have to say, the devTerm’s keyboard is too big for thumbs.
i got big ol’e bear paws… i might manage with just thumbs…
that said, if all the keys are programable… then i might edit the entire layout for chording while i use my bt kb (which may be an actual kb or another chording device)
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Assuming the pitch is 11mm, I drew out the keyboard on some paper to feel it out myself. It didn’t feel all that awkward. Assuming the key caps are designed with adequate spacing, I don’t think my fingers would be accidentally pressing multiple keys.
Oh one hand, it would be nice to have full size mechanical keys. But also, I’d hate to miss out on the devterm’s novel size keyboard that’s already designed. I love tiny/compact things. Maybe not something to type a novel in, but I am optimistic the size might be great for coding/scripting in. I might be an exception, but when I write software I usually do more thinking than typing. With IDE tools like auto-complete and such, most of coding is hot keys and typing the first few letters of things, then tab-complete.
That being said, I’d love to see new keyboard modules. I’m curious how they might work with the devterm’s existing enclosure though.
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let us also consider that this is supposed to be fully programable. if you dont like it as a regular keyboard, you can remap the whole thing to play music like those new modular music keyboards or a even a beat pad, or a game pad on steroid i imagine… with that many buttons there possibilities even boggle my mind… probably becuase i imagine the possible chord structures i could form for typing and macros and… and… head spins
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Subjectively, speaking, as long as this keyboard is maximum as big as Nokia N810, I am good. I use a Nokia N900 still, and as a 30 something adult, it is pretty good. I am glad that there is a shift on both the sides. Having used the N900 keyboard for programming, I think this will be plenty big.
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i reckon it’s WAY bigger than even the sidekick thumb board. maybe by at least twice as much. the screen alone is 180mm wide…
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The Gemini PDA that @ashneo76 mentioned in the other thread looks really comparable to the DevTerm’s keyboard size. It has a keyboard width of 177mm.
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Thank you for the comparison photo. The gemini pda is crippled by SoC. The keyboard is nice except for the somewhat finicky spacebar.
The SoC, CPU errata and the somewhat tedious flashing process are what hold it back.
In the of CPi, I hope I can swap out the module for a more powerful RPi down the road.
CM4 changed the interface, CM3 may be the last rpi compatible with DevTerm 
Just a bit of copy pasting, but;
RPi 4:
Broadcom BCM2711
Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz
2GB, 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM
Broadcom VideoCore VI 500 MH GPU
CPi 3.14:
A-0604
ARM64-bit Dual-core Cortex-A72 @ 1.8GhZ and ARM64-bit Quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.4Ghz
4GB LPDDR3
Mali-T864 4 core GPU
A few frequencies are missing re: RAM and GPU, and the information isn’t like for like, but where it counts it is.
I posted something similar in this thread.
But basically, the A-0604 is plenty powerful compared to a rPi4, and arguably the GPU is better too.
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Thanks for the comparison. This cleared up some things for me
I like the CPi is based on only ARM hardware and that the GPU has an open driver in the kernel: Building Panfrost
In that regards, I would rather have the CPi instead of having to rely on qualcomm.
Now, my only concern is if the keyboard has a backlight.
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I highly doubt you would find any kind of standard illumination. I never EVER use the backlighting on my Barocco MD770 with bluetooth support. If I do turn it on, it is only to show off and I’m gonna use USB mode cuz it will kill the battery in like 20m, and that’s just a keyboard,… If they do manage to implement some kind, I can only imagine that EL sheets would be used due to their extremely low power draw. All that said… There is a reasons I have such a keyboard… and portability is one of them. Perfect pair to the DT, i feel personally.
I wanted to check this out for myself so I made a very rough print of the keybed and a few keycaps from the models.
Transatlantic currency and my fat index finger for scale.
After sitting with this print and pretending to type on it for a minute, I’m pretty happy with the scale and can’t wait for mine to arrive 
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W0W it really does look like a thumb board next to your fat finger.
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Er… thanks. I think.
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i had assumed it was going to be a thumb board from the start
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@SakaSal : yeah, i had assumed it to be about that size judging by comparison to the 18650s they had rendered.
@Steve_Engledow : Preem job on the test print and comparison. I appreciate ya sharing your findings.
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I’m not gonna cancel my order, but boy oh boy am I wondering why new-device developers seem to be so allergic to making a useful machine. I also invested early in both Astrohaus products and was disappointed in their crappy battery life and unnecessary decision to use out-of-date and sloooooooooooooow e-paper tech.
I am honestly struggling to come up with any explanation why this device had to be so small, or at a minimum why making it so tiny is better than making it usable on a human scale. Maybe it’s all price-related, but in a world where I can get a totally functional human-sized keyboard for $30, how much would it have cost to make something with a reduced number of adult-sized keys?
Much of this project looks great, which is why the ridiculously lilliputian size of the actual machine is so brutally disappointing.
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