Blackberry PRIV, the perfect dynalist phone

Hello all,

As some of you will know, I have been on a constant journey to try and maximise my dynalist experience on mobile. My biggest initial problem, dedicated to dynalist as I am for running my life, was dealing with load times given my frequent use for both input and reference.

First I took to carrying around two phones to solve this, with one entirely dedicated to dynalist:

This worked well for a time, but then I came across the incredible flynx. This solved the load time issue and made the second phone somewhat superfluous:

I still wasn’t quite happy however. When trying to do serious work on my phone, combined limitations of mobile, android, dynalist and flynx made it very stressful and unpleasant. In particular, despite being on a large screen, having a keyboard take up 40% of valuable screen space was not ideal. Further, flynx (and it’s competitor, flyperlink) unfortunately minimises the keyboard every time you move between bullets (so you have to press with your finger to type again each time … sigh). Further, the functions ribbon on dynalist was unreliable for me (replicated across several phones), forcing me to have to minimise the keyboard frequently to access it. All of these issues combined made for an incredibly frustrating mobile experience, and I found myself just waiting until I was at my laptop to do serious work.

Then recently I got a notice from my operator that I was due an upgrade. Long story short, after much research I came across the blackberry PRIV. The phone runs android 6 (not blackberry os), and crucially for this post, comes with a slide out physical keyboard.

This thing has changed everything! When using dynalist now, the full 5.4 inch screen is available for viewing my dynalists without any on screen keyboard getting in the way. I don’t have to contest with a software keyboard popping up / minimising at irritating times - the physical keyboard is always there, dependable (Ps. If you do want the on screen keyboard (which has swipe function and is useful sometimes), you are completely able to by just sliding the physical keyboard closed). You can get very fast on the physical keyboard as the tactile element allows you to learn to touch type unlike an on screen keyboard so you can actually watch the predictions (yes it has predictions even on the physical keyboard at the bottom of the screen) which you can swipe up on the keyboard to activate - it all works very, very well.

Further the keyboard has shift, alt and ctrl keys, allowing a lot of dynalist function directly from it (like ctrl + O, which isn’t even available on mobile normally without connecting a physical keyboard) as well as all the windows ctrl functions like select all, cut, paste etc which makes things soo much more smooth. Of course the dynalist slider is now there, permanently at the bottom of the screen, unnafected by the machinations of any on screen keyboard popping up and down.

Finally, the killer feature: double tap on the keyboard and it becomes a cursor trackpad (not like a mouse pointer, but allowing you to move the blinking text entry cursor) which allows you to drag the cursor round your dynalist list by sliding your thumb up down, left right etc. Yes this means side to side but also up and down, between items! I cannot tell you how useful this is at times. When in non-edit mode also the keyboard-come-trackpad can be used to scroll through your list, without obscuring the screen with your finger.

My friends, I am living a dream come true! :slight_smile: I cannot pretend I can work as well as on a laptop, but it is SO MUCH closer than before, and I am once again actually enjoying doing serious work on my phone (just a note, all of this applies to other kinds of serious work like word processing also - the mere fact of having the entire screen available while typing is game changing).

With all conviction I recommend this phone to you if you too are a Dynalist fiend and are looking to upgrade.

Enjoy,

Stephen

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yea i was thinking about having a separate tablet or maybe smartphone for a single purpose, one day… maybe

i’d imagine that if you just keep any given software/app up, it would not have initial load times?

Yea pretty much, very occasionally maybe

Owner of the Blackberry PRIV here. Sliding keyboard is indeed a godsend for Dynalist. Though basically any app that needs a lot of reading/writing space like different messengers.

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How fast do you type on that thing? I use GBoard gesture typing so I can input a sentence very rapidly. Pressing down those little buttons one by one - is it less of a nightmare than it looks?

I actually have pretty fat fingers and can type no problem on the keyboard. You can get really fast on it because you can touch type as you can learn the feel of the physical layout - moreover because of that it’s a much less frustrating typing experience than e.g. gesture typing, which is great for long words but I find frequently errs for shorter ones - I find it a wonderful typing experience personally (I liked it immediately but don’t be surprised if it feels a bit weird at first)

I’m intrigued. I would buy a dynalist only device if it was effective enough.

How many taps (or whatever) to go from screen off in pocket to viewing dynalist or typing into inbox?

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Well I would recommend getting the flynx app (I have a post on here somewhere about that) which provides a facebook-style floating button browser - using that you can keep dynalist always in ram so you never have to face reload times - then it’s just unlock phone -> tap flynx from anywhere -> and you’re there - there’s also the dynawrite app for quick send to inbox

The final amazing thing I would say about this phone for dynalist is you can map any and all keyboard shortcuts to ctrl + whatever, so you can zoom, move items, move between items, everything, all from the keyboard - it is pretty wonderful - oh also it has great text substitution built in so you can create shortcuts for your tags etc

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Never tried gesture input on physical keyboard. Though PRIV does recognize sliding gestures on keys. Anyone tried?

The idea of gesture input on physical keys makes me shudder. Clkclkclkclkclkclkclkclk. Like sandpaper.

I’d recommend Samsung Browser + Add to Home Screen option.

Add to HS make the mobile web version of the Dynalist work like an app plus it is a lot more snappier.
SB has an added advantage over other browsers, select a hyperlink and copy it > paste it in Dynalist and you’ll have a hyperlink completely formatted like it should be. No select link text and select link and copying then seperately.

I haven’t been able to find the hyperlink copying capabilities on either Chrome or Firefox for Android.

And 90% (10% is running heavly ram exertive games) of the time it is loaded in the bg so no problems with re-loading and such.

Plus, gboard has text-expander capabilities which can be really sweet depending how you make use of it.

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Actually the gesture typing feels fine but I don’t use it - two thumb tap a tap