Lessons from the fyde tab duo Sun, 14 Dec 2025 Technology, Opinion ============================= Around two months ago, I ordered a fyde tab duo, a self-described ``hackable linux tablet'' which I indented to replace my aging pinebook-pro and also take over as my main annotation (touch) device, a role currently held by an ipad mini. Generally, I believe that having fewer devices for a single purpose -- in this case: several research devices -- makes like easier, and unifying my annotation device and writing device with the fyde-tab was my attempt at doing so. Full-disclosure: I have applied for a refund for the fyde tab duo. Simply put, the software and hardware were both too half-baked, and I ran into several issues -- two of which made the device completely unusable -- which lead me to ultimately send the device back. This post however intends to cover the lessons I have learned from my time with the device, because -- despite its numerous problems -- I believe that the fade-tab is a peek into a potential future for general computing. Background ---------- For those unaware, the fyde tab duo is a tablet-laptop two-in-one type of device. One might see it as a tablet with a keyboard and trackpad integrated in a detachable case, but I think this description does the device a disservice. An equally disservice able description would be to call it a laptop with touch functionality. I will get more into this later, but for now know that the fyde-tab is a true two-in-one. The fyde-tab comes by default running fyde-os a chrome-os based operating system. This means that it primarily runs web-apps, android apps, and (with slightly worse integration) Linux applications. The device comes with an active stylus, the aforementioned keyboard-case, and a kickstand. It sports a single USB-C port, a headphone jack, and a micro-SIM/micro-SD tray, though no LTE module is installed by default. Lessons ------- One of the main things which I learned from this device concerns the future of general computing. Chrome os was originally intended to run web-apps exclusively. The sales-pitch was that ``most users to everything in the browser anyways''. This statement -- I believe -- is obviously wrong, and the fact that this design efficiently locked users into Google's ecosystem did not go unnoticed by many users. Google quickly switched gears and now support both Android and Linux apps alongside the web-based applications. This path -- I believe -- shows an important set of realisations on behalf of Google regarding computer software. First, many people do a lot of their work in a browser. As such, web-based-applications must be treated as first-class-citizens. Websites must be made installable for easy-access, offline-support, and faster load times. Second, Android apps have provide much to the other functionality which users rely on. Messaging apps, authenticators, music players. Android fills in where web-apps fall short. Thirdly, professional (desktop) software is still a must-have. Mobile-, and web-based- office suites are still more limited than their desktop counterparts. This goes even more so for image-, and video- editing. The development makes a lot of sense when looking at it in this (chronologically accurate) order, however, I think it should also give us pause when starting from a desktop operating system. There is functionality which -- like it or not (I don't) -- is NOT AVAILABLE on desktop, but only on mobile. Primarily banking, messaging, and authentication. If the operating system cannot treat these as real-, and legitimate- applications and integrate them alongside `native' applications, they I fear it will be left behind in the coming years. The same goes for web-applications. The second point is related and became clear to me by using all three app-types side-by-side: input methods -- namely touch -- should be treated as first-class citizens as well. Now, do not get me wrong, I do not think that all laptops should have touch-screens (far from it), however, I do believe that touch has some real benefits which must be recognized. I already mentioned pdf-annotation which is simply much faster using a stylus compared to either mouse, trackpad, or keyboard. I also noticed the benefits of the touchscreen in editing images with the lasso-select tool, not to mentioned handwriting and drawing. But even for normal computing tasks, it was simply faster and more precise to use the stylus compared to the trackpad (perhaps even faster than using a mouse). That being said, app developers should also recognize that the keyboard is a valid mode of input as well (the amount of calculator apps I went through until I found one which accepted keyboard input was staggering). On the whole though, just as with application types, I think hardware manufacturers should look at ways to incorporate SEVERAL METHODS OF INPUT for the varying types of applications people use on a daily basis. The fyde-tab showed a potential future in this direction. The default `fyde os' automatically switched between `tablet mode' and `laptop mode' depending on whether the physical keyboard was attached or not. Essentially, this switched all windows from floating (like on a typical desktop) to tiling (full screen or side-by-side), and changed the navigation to one based on gestures. What this showed mostly is really how little difference there is between the paradigms these days. In fact, I frequently manually switched to tablet mode with the keyboard attached and vice-versa depending on the work I was doing at the time. There has been a persistent dream among hackers and general users to unify all computing into a single device. Having a phone which slides into a case to become a tablet or which plugs into a display and keyboard to become a desktop. More recently, this has outed itself in the dime-a-dozen ``can you use an iPad as a pc'' videos and articles. Each time however, it is the software which falls short: Ipads do not support enough professional software (believe me I have tried), because apple treats them like big iPhones (though you also cannot use one as a phone because they restrict the modem to mobile-internet only). Android has much the same problem. But a phone running something like Fydeos? That might just do it. Of course, I should mention that the fyde-os integration between these three-systems and two-form-factors is still half-baked. Linux apps take a lot longer to start up compared to websites or android apps. Each platform has its own separate filesystem, adding friction to sharing data between them. The on-screen keyboard does not work for Linux apps and many of them don't respond well to touch input (they treat it like a mouse). Android apps meanwhile often ignore the keyboard input, and sometimes get confused about the device's orientation (the wide-screen orientation seems to be read as `portrait' while the up-right oration is `landscape' which is exactly opposite of how the camera reports making the image always show up on its side), but nevertheless, the framework is there. Perhaps one day I will look at the linux-phone approach. People working on these projects tackle this dream from the opposite direction, turning the phone into a simple touch-screen computer and optimizing the software for touch, standby, and cellular connections. These devices can be simply plugged into a monitor and keyboard (or a hypothetical tablet enclosure), but they are currently still poor phones. Generally, I believe in the `Unix philosophy' of ``do one thing and do it well''. And this dream might be seen as the antithesis of that. I would counter that the Unix philosophy works well for software, but less-so for hardware. When each of these devices (laptop, tablet, and phone) costs up to (and over) 1000 euros, and when each of them has essentially the same internals (in the case of apple: literally the same internals), then it becomes simply a case of having different form-factors for different tasks. And honestly, I do not think we should -- for reasons ranging from the economic to the environmental -- encourage the ownership of several ENTIRETY SEPARATE devices only because the software ran on each is limited to a niche so that the companies that make them can sell you more stuff. Conclusion ---------- As I mentioned in the introduction, I ended up applying for a refund for the fyde tab. I took a weekend to patch up my pinebook back into a usable state and will probably keep using it for a couple of years. But when the time comes where it truly breathes its last breath (this is its third resurrection after all), it WILL be a GENERAL computing device, perhaps not the true all-in-one that I would like, but it should at least accommodate my needs by being versatile in the manner of interaction (touch, keyboard, mouse), operation (desk, lap, hand) and application (desktop, mobile, web). In the mean time, I will keep an eye on the various projects (mainly coming from the Linux-mobile space) which could bring parts of this versatility to my -- now 7 year old -- patchwork of a pinebook. ----------------------------------------------------------------- All of my writing and software projects are available free of charge under CC-BY unless stated otherwise. I do not accept monetary donations, but if my work has brought you value I ask you to donate to a charitable cause or high-impact fund, organisation, business, institute, or individual driving moral progress.