Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

My rule for buying phones was never to spend more than 4,000 CZK. After adjusting for inflation, I have increased this to 5,000 CZK. I also recently bought another Redmi Note 9 PRO to replace my broken main phone. I did not plan to buy a phone. However, I saw a very nice phone with a hardware keyboard, which I have always wanted. But it costs 9k CZK, which I never wanted to pay for a phone. However, my wife decided to buy me a present, so I now have it.



It's really nice, too. I really enjoy writing on the hardware keyboard, as I'm not able to write quickly or precisely on a touchscreen.

But let's start from the beginning. Firstly, I decided to order a screen protector to protect the screen. Then I had a conversation with a friend who had bought the same phone and they told me that it comes with protective glass already applied to both screens and an extra piece of protective glass in the package. So I cancelled my order. When the phone arrived, I realised that there was just a protective foil on the front and back screens, and no spare.

So I was happy again that I had ordered a front screen protector, and I immediately ordered one for the back screen too, which already had a scratch on the foil. So, every package is different.

The second issue I was facing was related to the keyboard. At first, I must say that it is really intuitive and pleasant to use. The problem was the software. The phone only supports a few languages. English, German and a few others, but I needed Czech support, especially for accents. I also prefer QWERTZ.

I was able to switch from English to German, which helped me switch to the QWERTZ layout. However, I was unable to write accents or in Czech, as the autocorrection tried to change every word to a German one.

After another conversation with Logout, I installed Microsoft SwiftKey, which is possibly the only software keyboard that can handle the hardware input. I switched it to Czech and was able to write quite well. However, with the hardware keyboard, I was back on QWERTY. I spent about twenty minutes tinkering with the settings, turning different keyboards, inputs and settings on and off, until I finally got it to work the way I wanted. The only disadvantage is that the software keyboard often appears when focus is given to an input, but fortunately it disappears as soon as I press any hardware key for the first time.

So, having overcome the initial problems, I now really enjoy using this phone.

Another interesting feature is the secondary display on the back. You can set almost any app to appear on the app menu there and run it on the small screen, which is quite funny. It's nice and funny, but I still haven't found any practical use for it. I'm still hoping I'll find at least one though.

Aside from the others, the phone comes with some impressive specifications, such as 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. I can't imagine using all of that. But it's good to know that I won't have to worry about anything for a long time.

I hope to write at least one more article about the phone and the great apps that can be used on it. Hopefully, I will also be able to write about some practical uses for the secondary screen.