Smartphones For Text SSH Use — Revisited 374
jfischet writes "Back in 2005 a Slashdot user asked this question and the responses were helpful — but I'd like to ask again to see what has changed in three years. I'd like to know what this community thinks is the best choice of smartphone for remotely administering Linux/UNIX boxes via SSH."
The iPhone, of course. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The iPhone, of course. (Score:5, Funny)
Nokia E70 huh? That reminds me... (Score:2)
HTF do I get a decent smartphone with AT&T/Cingular?
Do you really need their support? (Score:4, Informative)
Simple check list:
- Does the phone use a standard type of wireless signal that your carrier supports (e.g. GSM900)?
- Can you find instructions on how to set up GPRS on Cingular [google.com]?
- Do you want to pay the full, unsubsidized fee for the phone?
If you can answer yes to all three of the above, you've got a winner.Re:Do you really need their support? (Score:5, Informative)
it doesn't work like that In the USA. the USA cell system sucks, only AT&T and t-mobile have any GSM coverage, and don't expect working 3G data access without paying out the arse for it. If you happen to go to an area that has better verizon than AT&T coverage your screwed.
Basically 1) fails 50% of the time. Not to mention that GSM in the USA is on a different set of frequencies than in Europe, so unless it is a quad band GSM your still fscked.
I love this country no one can agree on anything so nothing ever really gets done properly, and it takes 5 tires to get it right.
Re:Do you really need their support? (Score:5, Funny)
and it takes 5 tires to get it right.
Gotta agree - Americans love that full-size spare...
Re:Do you really need their support? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, you mean like $15 per month for unlimited EDGE/HSDPA for AT&T's MEdia Net?
AT&T and Verizon's coverage quite good. Even T-Mobile works really well 95% of the time.
Quadband, you mean like nearly every decent GSM handset released in the last 5 years?
Re:Do you really need their support? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Deregulation" increases competition in undeveloped markets. When there are already big players, all deregulation does is increase the competitive power of those players to squash and purchase smaller startups. What the government needs to do is to subsidize the startup capital and regulate the big players. THAT will increase competition because it will lower the barriers to market entry.
The biggest problem with the FCC is that as a regulating body, they are not. Instead what's being done is state and local governments move in to tax the startup capital for telcos (which should be bought and paid for by tax dollars which are going to Iraq), and the FCC pussyfoots around with their "deregulation" to make sure that men with money don't have to pay shit to anyone.
This is how your small ISP in buttfuck, new jersey can get raided by FBI and have your server taken straight off the rack, but AT&T is rewarded for illegal wiretapping.
First fanboy alert. (Score:4, Insightful)
And there you were - right in the first post. Thank you for reaffirming my faith in fanboi nature.
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Yes, that wouldn't be a lot of fun programming, or using a shell.
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First Hater Alert (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone is fine for typing text. And the fully dynamic interface allows for some interesting possibilities for shell control, along with more room for a wider view on the screen. Penny Aracde [penny-arcade.com] of course, put it best... "If you find such things unpleasant, then I suggest you develop a taste for forced labor because by the year twenty-twenty all that sneer is going to get you is a slot in the underclass boiling corpses."
Don't be so dismissive until you see what terminal possibilities might arrive with the SDK.
And there you were - right in the first post. Thank you for reaffirming my faith in fanboi nature.
Don't your eyes scratch a lot with that wool you keep pulling over yourself?
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The really annoying thing is, it would probably be great for writing with a stylus, but that does not (last I checked) work on an iPhone.
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Re:First Hater Alert (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Hater Alert (Score:5, Informative)
A few ways - one, the keyboard displays a larger version of the key you are currently pressing, and does not actually take input until you lift away - so if you hit the wrong key you can slightly adjust your finger to be on the right one. That's much quicker than it all sounds.
Secondly, truly predictive input. I'm not just talking about word completion (though it does that) but by also recognizing what you are typing by the pattern of the keys you press - so the predictor knows you are off to the side a little while typing and makes suggestions based on what you would have hit if you'd hit the right keys to start with. That works really, really well to the point where most miskeys don't actually mean you have to go back and correct a word as it simply corrects it for you.
With more specific tasks (say, for instance, a terminal) in seems to me there is further automatic aid that could be rendered while typing. If people are having trouble getting text right they aren't trusting the correction as much as they could/should be - or they need a little more practice.
The really annoying thing is, it would probably be great for writing with a stylus, but that does not (last I checked) work on an iPhone.
I really liked Grafitti, did not like Jot (think that was the name) as much, but I greatly prefer the iPhone keyboard for text input over Grafitti which I used heavily for several years before my Palm died.
You also have the possibilities to support gestures in an application as well, which could be interesting for control.
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It's also the most closed, so if your ssh host requires funky settings, you aren't going to connect. Rather unfortunate, since it's a rather nice interface, but more focus is on the proprietary ring-tones and other kiddie functionality.
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Rather than the button press people seem to think they want when speaking of "tactile feedback", it would be nice to be able to feel the keys so you could text by touch. Not that any phone makes this terribly easy, but some people are quite adept at finding the right keys by touch on their normal phones. The iPhone has feedback aplenty
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Why not do what I did with my Nokia E90 and buy an Apple bluetooth keyboard? It works really nicely with my Nokia.
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Second Fanboi Alert! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, for short messages, typing in URLs, etc, it is fine.
What the submitter asked for is not fine general text entry, but the best choice, specifically for ssh. An iPhone (where every slash, period & ampersand is three taps away) is a poor choice for ssh text entry.
Don't be so dismissive until you see what terminal possibilities might arrive with the SDK.
Right, thanks - we're looking for a solution right now, not a possible solution that may come about one day.
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The point he made that blew over your head is that the keyboard on the iPhone (since it isn't physical) can adapt to whatever situation it needs to in order to make efficient typing for the application at hand. Therefore, the keys that would be useful for a SSH session would be on the screen, one pus
Fanboi redux. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want to use a few more weasel words in your post? Qualify things a little more?
You'd make a great white house spokesperson.
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Shell use is not the same as general text entry and the URL keyboard is a good example of how the keyboard can be adapted better for SPECIFIC (same word you used) tasks. Such as ssh.
And, thanks to Apple being even more proprietary with their shit than Microsoft is, I can't do anything about that. There's no SSH keyboard today, and I can't build one.
It's not some far off "one day". It's a MONTH.
Ok, what happens in a month? Has someone specifically announced an iPod SSH client, complete with decent text entry, which will ship in a month?
Re:Hater Redux (to tears) (Score:5, Insightful)
You are betting on some application coming out in a month, or less then a month. Your argument seems to be that once this application is developed, tested, etc. in less then a month, it will *instantly* be the best ssh application. That's rubbish.
You state that some unknown improvement made to the iphone, at some unkown point in the future might address all the issues theOP might have with the iPhone, and the OP should therefore wait with making *any* decision until such time as the IPhone has this improvement. This logic would extend to saying "and if the next model doesn't have it, wait some more". Thats ridiculous.
And, on the basis of this deeply flawed argument, you call the OP a "hater". That's playground logic. What are you, 12? Does your daddy know you are using his PC?
oh, and if you are still reading, please make sure you realise I am not saying *anything* about any of apple's products (just want to make sure you dont start changing the subject and calling me an apple hater as well).
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Slight correction: There is currently a jailbreak method to enable SSH for iPhone. Nothing official, though.
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Re:First fanboy alert. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First fanboy alert. (Score:5, Interesting)
Different Blackberry models have different keyboards. To call the iPhone keyboard inferior for text entry as compared to a Blackberry is to ignore the different performance characteristics of different Blackberry keyboards.
I'm on my third B/B (7250, 7280, 8830) and of the three the current keyboard - on the 8830 - is the best for me. But I know people at work for whom this isn't the case, the particular bevelling of the 8830's keyboard hindering them rather then helping.
I have limited typing exposure to the iPhone, but a tonne of Blackberry keyboard time under my belt, some good, some significantly worse.
Note that the B/B Pearl is an entirely different beast, and if you're comparing residential (i.e. non-commercial/business) market phones, you'd could arguably end using the Pearl as RIM's entry.
I've yet to see a truly comprehensive test of keyboard usability across smartphones. Here's an individual who seems to do pretty well on both a B/B (a 7250?) and an iPhone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsUPYmUzYXA&feature=related [youtube.com].
clearly, you don't own one. (Score:2)
The error rate is high because (big fuckin' surprise, just like everyone predicted) there's no tactile response. There's no caps lock or sticky shift. Only alpha characters are on the main keyboard; you have to go into sub-keyboards, and there's no way to return automati
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Well, I'm bound to be wrong if I come up with an exact number, but at least 5 have been mentioned already : Nokia 770, N800, N810, E70, and E90. OK, the 770, N800 and N810 aren't phones and they supersede each other (though they do VoIP), but the other two seem to be worth investigating, if you ask me.
I use an E90, and the keyboard is functional, though I wouldn't want to use it in anger - for that, I use an App
You might want to explore some time saving tricks. (Score:3, Informative)
...when using your iPhone keyboard.
Nokia E70 (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone [thebestpag...iverse.net]
Virtual keyboard is NEVER perfect (Score:4, Informative)
No matter how much you like your shiny iPhone, the poster cited SSH as his primary use case. It means his primary use case is typing shell commands. Which means a phone with a real keyboard will work best for him. Yes, you CAN type text relatively OK with the iPhone. No, that does NOT make it the best phone to type text on. Get a clue!
If the guy had asked for a smooth web browsing experience, recommending a (3G!) iPhone would have been understandable. But for SSH? Pure fanboy, or pure ignorance. Take your pick.
Oh, as for what phone to use - E70 is better if you want the regular phone form factor and have good eyes. But personally I would prefer E61i (with Blackberry form factor), as it has much larger screen (although slightly smaller resolution) which means text is easier to read. And it has more RAM, which means you can run more applications simultaneously. E.g. with E70 running a Java MIDlet and the browser simultaneously is going to be iffy because both are RAM-hungry applications. E61i is newer too, so it has a more recent version of the web browser.
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I don't know, maybe the truest of fanboys who just blindly promote Apple products might claim it to be a good idea, but nobody who has actually tried it (such as myself) would say it's something other than a "I'm glad I was able to do it that one tim
Re:The iPhone, of course. (Score:5, Interesting)
I love the benefits of the virtual keyboard for most uses. SSH is most definitely not one of them. The VNC app is much more useful given that touchscreens are much better suited to visual interfaces (and it's surprisingly useful even over EDGE with decent signal strength, enough so that I was able to start a SuperDuper! backup of my system while at a red light on my way to the Leopard launch - no need for the fanboy comments, please - I'm clearly not one of the senseless evangelist types).
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Palm OS + pssh (Score:5, Informative)
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My solution is not a smart phone (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmphf - frist posit?
Anyway, my solution is not a smartphone. I use an LG CU500, bluetooth tethered to a 12" G4 iBook. I get a real keyboard and AT&T (originally Cingular) gets me 3G in most places I go. Even on "edge" service, SSH is tolerable, 200ms-ish of latency.
Sidekick Terminal App (Score:4, Informative)
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Danger's devices have a terrible build quality, especially with heavy use. While the Sidekick3 is the first Danger device that has lasted more than 6 months without a handset replacement, you know it's b
Sony-Ericsson M600i and Nokia N800 (Score:5, Informative)
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The 810s are nice, but as long as I have a flat surface, I'm comfortable enough with the on-screen keyboard, for short sessions anyway.
I have to strike an uneasy truce between my inherent unwillingness to spend, and my geeky attraction to shiny toys. Upgrading the N800 would be crossing the line...
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PuTTY (Score:4, Informative)
This interests me. (Score:3, Interesting)
BlackBerry and MidpSSH (Score:2, Informative)
A bit early to ask, it seems to me (Score:2, Redundant)
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Not to mention the array of remote deskt
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It really depends on what you need to do with it. If you just want to check security logs or do a manual backup, the iPhone is good enough.
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Yes, because it would be so convenient to have a terminal application on a phone that doesn't have a keyboard.
"something could be done with completion", yeah come on, just imagine a terminal app working that way for a second....done? OK, then let's be serious again now.
I guess one could buy a bluetooth keyboard to go with the iPho
Re:A bit early to ask, it seems to me (Score:5, Informative)
No, you couldn't. Don't assume iPhone would do anything that a windows mobile device does (for the last five years I might add). No, no, no. When Apple says bluetooth they mean precisely two (out of more than 20) profiles: Hands-Free Profile (HFP) and
Headset Profile (HSP). That means NO keyboard (and "no" many other things like quality audio out - and no remote control for that matter, no serial profile=no bluetooth GPS, no file transfer over bluetooth, no [about 20 times more no]).
Nokia E70 (Score:5, Informative)
I've been running one for close to 2 years for just this purpose.
Runs symbian putty perfectly, does 802.11 for when you can get to it, has an ok real web browser, and does real email (imap/pop/smtp).
And on the plus side, actually fits in a pocket, and can support real typing.
Pity nokia seem to consider it a dead-end product, and go out of their way to ignore it.
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Re:Nokia E70/E90 (Score:2)
I've used it for logging into my various Linux systems (Ubuntu, Ubuntu server, Fedora Core) as well as OS X.
Works nicely enough on the E90 with the high resolution display (800 x 352 pixels) u
Just a hunch... (Score:2)
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pssh on Palm Treo (unfortunately) (Score:4, Informative)
pssh on the Palm Treo is the only thing that seems to work for me. Keep in mind I want to use Emacs via my smart phone, so I need Control and Meta (aka Alt) to work well. pssh uses the center key for these, with one click for Control and a second for Meta. It also has a very small font which allows me a 80 column wide view.
I have considered switching to a HTC phone such as the AT&T Tilt with Pocket PuTTY. Unfortunately, it seemed to hard to use for two reasons. One, I couldn't easily find a way to have a really small (but usable) fond. Two, I couldn't find a way to easily enter Control and Meta. I tried this mostly at the store, so if there are solutions to this, please let me know!
I have tried the iPhone with server side ssh script on a friends iPhone. Again the font and keyboard issues made it seem not too feasible. It seems like the font issue would be easy to fix, but the keyboard Control/Meta issue seems even harder to address on the iPhone. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm thinking of getting an iPhone 2.x in July... web surfing has become more important than my ssh access.
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Oh MAN! I don't know where to even BEGIN with this one!
Treo650 (Score:2)
The screen size is pretty good for a phone (640x640 resolution too), and while the font in terminal emulation is small, it's mostly readable. There are a few key-c
Nokia E61i with putty (Score:2)
Re:Nokia E61i with putty (Score:5, Informative)
I use the E61i with midpssh, which has worked better for me than Putty, though I have long forgotten why.
The E61i's keyboard works great, I can type at a decent clip, and it has a proper control key. Some unix nerd characters (vertical bar, etc.) require 3 or 4 keypresses to get to but it's not that bad. Between wifi, GPRS, and 3G/UMTS I can pretty much always get online.
For example, even in countries where there seems to be no working data service over prepaid GSM SIM cards (e.g., Syria), I've just turned on the wifi sniffer and followed it to a fancy hotel, and then loitered in their lobby to fix a weeping server. The hotel people think I'm just sending text messages.
Downsides: It's a big phone physically, it could use more memory (get the web browser plus a few ssh windows going and you've hit the ceiling), and when the wifi isn't making a connection to a given access point it's very difficult to diagnose why. For example, I've never managed to get it to connect via my MacBook's internet connection sharing, which would be nice so I could sync up the email when I was at an internet cafe and save money on subsequent syncs over the cell network during the day.
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No camera is a feature, because many sites won't let camera phones in for security reasons.
Prior to that, I used an SE k750i with putty - horrendous, but it worked!
I also have an SE p1i, but owing to the fact that it doesnt have profiles, its useless as a business phone, and the contract its on is so expensive for data, I was very careful to remove putty after one bill.(O2, you really know how to
Hrm.. I have a Linksys WIP-320... (Score:2)
I did not have to do everything to get it running a terminal (with SSH) though, most of the work was done by some french dudes at http://www.freephonie.org/doku/white:dev [arisme.free.fr] (yes, that's two URL's, they are related).
It's an awfully small screen, and you probably need (magnifying) glasses to get work done, but... it *is* an SSH terminal and can help out a lot if you encoun
sidekick 3 (Score:2, Interesting)
A better question would be when can smart phones (Score:2)
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It does VoIP too - I tried this using MSN and Skype (over wifi on my E90), and it worked well enough.
Nokia E70 or N95 (Score:5, Insightful)
The E70 has a -real- keyboard, and runs Putty perfectly.
over the GPRS/3G network, or over WiFi, your choice.
The N95 has a regular phone pad, but I use a folding external bluetooth keyboard if I'm doing a lot of text.
and -every- feature of the N95 rocks. Putty runs perfectly, as always.
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I guess you're referring to the Nokia keyboard, but the Apple bluetooth keyboard works fine with the N95 too, I'm told (I use it on an E90), and I think there's even one or two other options in that respect.
It's nice to have the option of taking a keyboard along when you know you might need it, and yet not have to when you think you won't (but be able to use the phone's instead if you're wrong).
DS Lite, bitches (Score:4, Interesting)
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personally (Score:4, Insightful)
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For Cheap: Palm Centro (also mini-Opera) (Score:2)
Duh, Android! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, I'd have caved in and bought an iPhone by now were it not for my need for SSH with a decent keyboard. Oh, and that I want a less restricted development environment. Some of the Android phones should fit the bill, if you can hold out a few months.
Mobile Internet Devices MIDs (Score:2)
not a phone - nokia n810 (Score:2)
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The keyboard on the n810 is much better than the regular smartphone keypad. I have a N95 and although I've installed putty on it ssh'ing from the tablet is much more doable.
And it runs Linux. What more could you ask for?
blackberry 8820 + commercial ssh client (Score:2)
The blackberry now supports a smartcard bluetooth reader so you could fairly easily rig it to deauthenticate when removed from a short radius of your body. 88xx screen and keyboard are decent -- not
nokia n810, hands down (Score:2, Informative)
nevertheless.. the best -class- of device is still something like it or the iphone/ipod touch/ type devices, an openmoko, palms, blackberrys; something that is already halfway a computer. If it is itself a standard platform and a keyboard will at least pair
tell us what you end up getting (Score:2)
t-mobile wing (Score:2)
I've also gotten VNC to work on it, but it's kind of a pain to use with a small screen, but it is possible. nice thing with t-mobile is the data plan is only $20/month.
A real keyboard. (Score:3, Informative)
I actually like typing with this keyboard [apple.com] (wired version), and it's small enough to fit comfortably in a backpack, pretty much no weight to it at all. The wireless version could probably fit in a briefcase, and it speaks bluetooth, so I'm sure there's a phone out there that will work with it.
The other possibility is to ask why you want a smartphone, and not a real laptop [asus.com] -- not like it costs more than the iPhone anyway.
The iPhone is nice, but you can't beat a real keyboard, no matter what you're typing on.
PocketPCs (Score:4, Informative)
Challenges:
No escape key.
No builting software for remapping buttons to other keys.
Pocket Putty doesn't support arrow keys correctly, initially.
Solutions:
Bind an escape key using a button remapping tool.
Set these, for whatever your most important connection is:
HKCU\Software\SimonTathan\PuTTY\Sessions\SessionName\NoApplicationKeys: 1
HKCU\Software\SimonTathan\PuTTY\Sessions\SessionName\NoApplicationCursors: 1
After that, the device is pretty usable over ssh. Not perfect, but it's a good start.
Palm Treo or Centro with pssh (Score:2)
HTC Kaiser / TYTN II (Score:2)
HTC Kaiser (also sold as HTC P4550, TyTN II & AT&T Tilt 8925)
The phone has a slide-out keyboard which is quite useable and a 240 x 320-pixel, 2.8-inch display. Bluetooth and wifi (802.11g). The TyTN II is a quad-band handset with 3G and HSDPA and it also has GPS + Tomtom satnav!
PockeTTY [dejavusoftware.com]
VNC [freewarepocketpc.net]
WM6 Remote Desktop (RDP)- can be downloaded from here [pdaphonehome.com] if not pre-installed.
Roll-up fabric bluetooth keyboard [channeladvisor.com]
More phone info in the user forums
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I've always found Choung Networks mToken to be the best WinMo SSH client, has helpful extras such as port forwarding and a custom font to fit as much as possible on a tiny screen.
Motorola Q Phone (Score:2)
At work, we're trying out a number of different mobile phones for our on-call phones. My list of necessary features includes also SSH. We're looking at the Tilt and the latest generation of the Q Phone. I have to say the Tilt's only nice feature is the wider scree
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http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/download.php [xk72.com]
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