Is Minotaur One handheld laptop worth watching ?

[pyrat]

Hello.

It's the first thread I start here, I hope I got the right forum, feel free to move it elsewhere.

There's very little info yet. There's an (apparently US) company announcing a campaign in crowdsupply for a handheld imx6q powered laptop. It does not look like a game console., 4GB RAM, 5.5" AMOLED display, capacitive touch, qwerty keyboard, no game controls, but extension connectors and miniPCIe (for radios, I guess?) 2 USB type A + 1 OTG + HDMI + audio jack, 16 GB flash. No word on radios or SD cards. Apparently without software, you install your own.

No idea of the price yet, you can just subscribe to get news.

Imx6q (like in the novena) is nice in that it can use etnaviv 3d acceleration, and can boot without blobs (Scripted Direct Memory Access won't work but the system works anyway). The SOC has SATA but maybe the board does not carry it.
No word on RYF attemps.

There's still too few details. Depending on price and storage it might be interesting for those not into games. Or not.
There's apparently no trackpad, joystick, dpad, or anything like that, so you only have the touchscreen for mouse ?

 

[kuru]

Looks and sounds like a Pandora/Pyra, but with a touch screen that's unusable in regular desktop OS.
And I'd like to see how they manage acquiring any OLED screen for this alleged project.
Site's just a render and a whole lot of marketing blurb that hasn't even been proof read.
No names of who's behind the team because "they like their privacy". Aha.

No word on radios or SD cards

First paragraph talks about phone functionality.
Third paragraph at the top talks about a MicroSD.

It even has a "Speker".

May I have the honor of being the first to call vaporware?

 

[sulu]

The "specs" look mostly nice. At first sight, with its lack of gaming controls it seems to be even closer to what I'm actually looking for than the Pyra.
However there are two showstoppers for me:
1. No cursor keys: I'm still baffled. Seriously, I can hardly believe what I'm seeing. There is a Keyboard with NO cursor keys!
2. Capacitive screen only: This means that precise cursor inputs will be pretty much impossible, as capacitive styluses are still pretty imprecise. I would have expected a nub as a secondary mouse input.

The rendering also looks suspiciously slick. The display bezel looks like it was made by a big company like Dell or Lenovo that can afford to pay for lots of iterations of case design just to get the last 1% of the looks right. The keyboard with its evenly aligned keys and small size (compared to the available area) also looks like it was mainly designed to look good.

 

[jeeks]

Lol the hinge in the render I hope they get a case designer at some point
The specs are kind of nice though

 

[ashcloud]

Seems those guys are in need of some keyboards layout discussions

 

[Alperoot]

Seems those guys are in need of some keyboards layout discussions

I think we can help them discussing the keyboard layout, right? We're kinda OP at this

 

[rSl]

i like their privacy-theme and the hardware mic-switch.
but i also can spot some problems.

- ports are on the right side, not good for holding in hands.
- the front-edge doesn't look too comfortable for typing.
- the keys are somewhat crammed in the middle with unused space around them. (hint: add game-controls!)
- no 'spekers' in front position.
- the display may touch the keys when closed. (update: i just rechecked their rendering, it might work ok, but the bezel/hinge really looks fragile)

nontheless it looks nice and i wish them good luck with this, as we need more privacy respecting devices out there in the wild!

 

[Binky]

I'll be impressed when they have real engineering designs and demos.
That case looks like it was designed without serious technical thought.

 

[TeDaDeS]

It doesn't sound impossible hardware-wise, but fitting it in a case (look at Pandora/Pyra) is still a huge task. Without experience I can only imagine they buy a prefab China made handheld, or rebuild a Chinese tablet with their own 3D printed case.

 

[rygD]

rebuild a Chinese tablet with their own 3D printed case.

Isn't that how you do it these days?

 

[Agricola]

One thing on their website is concerning me a lot:

Talented Team: We too like our privacy.

That's great, but when you have a company, you should have some legal information there. And trusting a "talented team" of what seems like are just 2 guys, some CTO and man named Bret, isn't very easy to me. The only thing I could learn about them is that their website is registered by a company in Massachusetts and their phone number is registered there, too. This just makes the fact there's a whole bunch of spelling errors look way worse.

And why in hell would you have renders of your device if you don't even know how to build it yet? Every flaw I noticed and more were already mentioned here, but it just makes no sense to me to just put BS on a public website if you don't even know yourself yet. Yes, I also wasn't very happy about the early renders of the Pandora, but ED and he-who-shall-not-be-named at least said the design was far from final (if I remember correctly). Though the Minotaur One has a beautiful render, the reflection on the cup looks amazing. That wasn't cheap for sure.

The more I learn about other handheld laptops, the more I'm happy I preordered the Pyra.

 

[comradekingu]

Adding another column, you could do this:

caps on FN + |\
Can fit a lot of layouts natively on this.

 

[ible]

that reminds me, how would switching virtual terminals work with the Pyra? but now that i think about it, the Funkeymonkey of @bzar can easily output F1-F10 when hitting meta, and since it's an input device (and not running strictly under X), it should work for the virtual console.

 

[TrashyMG]

It seems any thread can devolve into a keyboard discussion.

 

[Agricola]

It seems any thread can devolve into a keyboard discussion.

Come on, that horrible layout was asking for it!
And with the little information we have on the Minotaur One, there's nothing else to talk about.

 

[Neelix]

Ahhh, see they've figured us out!

1. Post a shitty keyboard layout
2. Wait for the Pyra-handheld.com forum members to come up with some better layouts
...
?. Profit!

-Neelix

 

[rSl]

that reminds me, how would switching virtual terminals work with the Pyra? but now that i think about it, the Funkeymonkey of @bzar can easily output F1-F10 when hitting meta, and since it's an input device (and not running strictly under X), it should work for the virtual console.

or just use alt+left/right keys.

 

[ible]

of course, that only works once you're in it... (or haven't started up X)

 

[rSl]

of course, that only works once you're in it... (or haven't started up X)

aha! thanks, haven't started x for a looong time now.
i'm always right in 'it', consolewise speaking.

 

[FBnil]

1. No cursor keys: I'm still baffled.

I speculate the long thing to the right of the keys is an elongated nub, which might very well act like a cursor, or holding the fn key as a mouse nipple.

Image is 100% digital (to spot fakes, invert the colors of the image, and play with hue's). shadows check out, except the mug that does not have shadow at the sidefront, but the device has, which would mean it has rounded corners on the outside, faintly visible on the other sides as well. We could still go for the "touchpad is at the bottom of the device", if that does not convince you...