u/Asleep_Day_1975

Received my sidephone yesterday, I am absolutely in love with this thing. These are my initial impressions after a day of use:

Positives:

• Very customizable without sacrificing its dumb-ness. Way more apps than I expected are compatible and functional, but the smaller screen size and key input add friction and make the device feel like a tool rather than a distraction
• Qwerty keyboard works well (only ran into minor bugs) and feels fantastic, key mapper is so much fun to mess around with
• "Retro" camera is super cute, especially when using the OpenCamera app. I was surprised at how pretty the pictures i got out of it were, but i've always liked the lo-fi digital feel so other opinions may vary
• Flashlight is surprisingly bright for its size
• Calls sound great, no lag, high quality voices on both ends
• Case fits the device's form wonderfully, and has a very pleasant, grippy texture
• Device is designed and built with care and attention to detail. I fell in love with its appearance from pictures. In person it did not disappoint!

Recommendations:

• Sometimes notifications don't pop up on the lock screen (could just be an error with my settings)
• Device is slightly top heavy, maybe some small weights in new keypads could solve this
• It would be awesome to have official support for OpenBubbles or Bluebubbles, that way those transitioning from an apple device who own a mac can still use imessage (solving the lack of RCS) and iCloud keychain. Openbubbles currently functions with some minor bugs but with further support it could be even smoother.
• Beeper support would be great as well, as a young person a lot of people reach out through social media DMs so being able to access them without the addictive content is fantastic. Beeper runs but lags quite a bit, so I think official support would help out there

Thank you so much for the sidephone experience! I cant wait to see where this device goes in the future. I am very excited to be an early supporter, and I know you guys can do great things!

To the sidephone team as I've seen you're most active on here. Just curious if there's any updated estimate on when these phones will be shipping. I am in pretty desperate need of a phone and ordered with the assumption it would come this week or the next, I'm just wondering if that early June time frame is still accurate. Thanks!