First of all: Look at the title. That's how the name of this device is spelled. I've never, and probably will never, be able to spell that correctly without looking it up.
I've contributed to the crowdfunding campagne in 2020. Various pandamic-related issues, a partly re-design, Chinese lock-down delays, devious shipping-issues and, during the last few years, suspected additional, unexplaned issues caused the delivery date to be postponed uncounted times. More than three years later, I've received my Pro¹ X arrived. That means that I guessed right about the makers not being the worst scum of the earth because the ran off with the money without sendind out the devices that we knew had already been produced. I don't know how this scam should have worked unless they sold the devices again to other people. But that was the general tone to which the comments on Indiegogo had goaded each other over the years.
I wanted a keyboard phone for years. I've had My experience with the Planet Computers devices, which some see as the competition. I've had more hopes for the Pro¹ X being the device I was whishing, searching and waiting for becasue it's keyboard is closer to those of the later slide-out qwerty smartphones, like Nokias N900 and because the Pro¹ X's predecessor, the Pro 1, has been reviewd positively by people with the same preferences as me.
So, the phone finally arrived. And, it didn't work. The battery hasn't been charged in years. It didn't charge. It did nothing electronic. But luckily some other campagne contributor has figured out a way to persuade the phone to charge. Interesting that they decided to send out the devices without knowing how the receipients could use them. Of course, the battery's capacity isn't what it was advertised as. In airplane mode with the display turned off and no app running the battery lasts for just over 24 hours. When used, the battery gets drained respectively quickly. But it works. Enough for a few sentences about my first experience.
The keyboard is not the theoretical ideal my brain has developed in the last 10 years. But I don't think that ideal exists. There probably are keys with a nicer preassure point and a click that feels nicer and is even more reliable. There have been in 2O02. But I didn't honestly expect that in a sub-1000-€ phone. The slide-lout mechanism is as snappy and firm as I've seen it described by users od the previous F(x)tec phone. I hope it lasts at least a few hundret times as long as the one on the Astro Slide.
The camera is fine. Much better than the alibi camera of the Titan Pocket that I'm currently using as my main phone. As it happens, I the week after I received the phone I stayed in the same hotel I was in when I tried out the Astro Slide. So I was able to make the same pointless test photos that I've posted in the Anstro Slide entry back then. (See below.) Okay resolution, mediocre sensore, unreliable auto white balance, usable but not enjoyable under artificial light (of normal brightness).
The screen is nice, which is the absolute minimum one expects in the cheapest of phones nowadays. It's bright enough, has a higher resolution than I need, has noticable colour-shift when viewed at an extreme angle. One edge is rounded, which is a first in my personal phone, but not really something I'll expect to use. It's more than fine. I don't need a display as great as what's common nowadays.
It's the best phone I had in my hands in years. The best for my preferences. If only the battery hadn't been killed by it's years-long storage period, the software would be the only thing I'd have to concern myself with in order to make this my primary phone. The pre-installed Android is very very Google-y. Not to my taste anymore. It works well, as one would expect. Not as buggy as with the Astro Slide and previous Planet Computers' Mediathek-based PDAs. Once I've installed LineageOS and replaced the battery, this may become my favourite smartphone ever. It might finally be the one to beat the Nokia 9300 for practical reasons.