It’s been almost 20 years! Back in 2008, I wrote about the equipment I used to report from Mobile World Congress: My smartphone and a Bluetooth keyboard. This worked quite nicely for some time and I used the setup for many occasions. Eventually, however, notebooks got lighter and smaller and the size and mobility of a smartphone in combination with a foldable keyboard vs. versatility of a notebook shifted towards the notebook. For almost two decades! But now, ultra mobile work and productive quality time with the smartphone is back for me!
It took two decades for all pieces to fall into place again, but I recently picked up a foldable Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse again for a few euros to see how well I could work and live with with this hardware setup while leaving the notebook at home. And I was positively surprised how well this works now.
Ultra Mobile Work with Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Only
On my GrapheneOS Pixel 8, Nextcloud apps and the web browser based GUI to access files and text notes works well, the FOSS calendar app that synchronizes my Nextcloud calendars does a good job and, almost needless to say, e-mail on the smartphone was never really much of an issue in the past two decades. I’ve integrated OnlyOffice in my Nextcloud instance, and both the browser based and Android based apps to edit cloud based office text- and spreadsheet documents on my smartphone also works very well these days.
For voice and video communication, I use several apps on my smartphone: The Conversations XMPP messenger, the Signal messenger, the Nextcloud Talk app and BBB in the web browser. All of them work pretty well, and as the memory size on smartphones is almost equal to that of notebooks these days, it makes multitasking, switching between apps and keeping an ongoing voice call active in the background a fun thing to do.
For conference calls, I use a Bluetooth headset with a microphone close to the mouth with active microphone noise cancellation. This way, even a train racing by or a crying baby at the next table can’t be heard on the other side of the call. And if I’m not in a call, a tiny in-ear Bluetooth headset with active noise cancellation keeps reality at bay and behind an endless loop of smooth jazz. It would be great if I could have both microphone and loudspeaker noise cancellation at the same time, but so far I haven’t found a headset that does both.
The Smartphone and the Mouse
Apart from the almost full size Bluetooth keyboard that can be folded away nicely when not in use, the Bluetooth mouse significantly increases productivity for me, as tapping and swiping on the smartphone screen is by far inferior to using the mouse and mouse buttons when one has a proper table to set things up.
Summary
True, the small screen of a smartphone does get a bit in the way of productivity, but the equation size vs. versatility has definitely shifted significantly towards the smartphone again for ultra mobile scenarios. I’m amazed!