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! 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