i wanted to make this post to share some of my uses in the wild for my Pocket Reform and ask what y’all use them for? see if anyone has neat ideas i want to steal copy, here’s what i used it for most recently:
flashing my MONO Gateway devkit that i preordered over a year ago with some new firmware. soon to be my phone too now that everything’s in working order, and i’m ready to swap my SIM over thanks to the latest updates (shout out MNT & Josch for the Debian Trixie build!)
It’s a mobile computer but tiny! So it gets used everywhere where I need a small computer. I don’t have a “smart”-phone, so the pocket is how i go online when I’m mobile.
On long train rides, the tiny pocket keyboard fits tiny-people hands better than big-people hands:
I use the pocket to do lecture recordings for the third semester in a row now. I so far have recorded over 60 hours of full-hd video with the pocket. Very reliable. Not a single time did it fail:
My Pocket has the RK3588 while the classic which I’m typing this on has the A311D. The latter is too slow for some games, so I did my Factorio play-through on the Pocket:
Showing it off at local hacker events:
Be the one stable computer while all the others are being taken apart:
It’s the pocket reform so it sits in my pocket. 
EDIT: the photos above are a bit older, so here is a photo of a few minutes ago with a new use-case I have since I bought a second-hand portable monitor: watch some streams on the side while I am busy doing other stuff
The pocket is a good computer. Only very few rough edges and missing features. It’s certainly a stable part of my daily life.
my heart is melting!
absolutely awesome!
i wonder if the Pocket had feelings and was conscious what it would be thinking in that moment? 
that’s awesome, what background is that? it looks like a heatmap/layer light/inverted version of the standard background? or is that just the camera being used causing weird artifacts? and the coloured keycaps on the Reform classic are peak
that’s insanely awesome. what camera did you use? or do you mean only presentations in class? also do you put your teaching materials online anywhere? i’d be interested in them since i’m tryna get into comp sci myself
what pocket is that? like what’s the clothing? vest? belt mount? chest rig?
that’s cool, what game was that? looks neat
The Pocket Reform is my daily driver outside of work. I spend my commutes programming and writing on it (i have a very terminal friendly setup, which works ok on the small screen. Sometimes I also do solo-lunches where I use the pocket reform while drinking cocoa.
At home I connect it to a larger screen. I have a more ergonomic keyboard, but I haven’t bothered pluging it in yet. The pocket keyboard+trackball is a really great combo imho.
I have no idea why it looks this odd. It should be just the standard MNT wallpaper.
it’s just a 10 year old logitech webcam – nothing fancy at all
I can send you my lecture slides and or recordings privately. Just send a mail to johannes.schauer@thws.de This is an introductory class on C++.
outdoor jacket from Fjällräven
Starcraft 2
thank you so much, i’ll email you in a bit
cameras do weird stuff sometimes lol
oooh, neat, thank you! my fit’s all M-Tac, cool Ukrainian brand, gloves in my photo are their assault mk3 fingerless
hot cocoa is the absolute best drink like ever, i will die on this hill lol, love it.
it’s so awesome, i love it so much
Its really my daily driver when I’m not using my desktop at home.
One of the better uses to show was probably the rooting and flashing of valetudo on the used vacuum robot I bought
absolutely iconic use for the Pocket, I love that. may have to get a robot vac and do that one myself too
edit: i just noticed the sticker “eepy inside” lmfao, i love that
I’m on my Pocket mostly when on the move outside work: camping, weekends etc. It has a modem, and I’m using it as a general purpose computing device: messaging/emails, browsing, occasional programming, media player for kids. I want to use it also as a main PC, but I’m anxious about wearing those on-mb ports. I’ve ordered 2.0 motherboard, hoping for that single port docking and maybe a bit sturdier hdmi port.
What antennas are you using? I have very weak reception with the ones I’m using.
I think I have two of these, glued side by side on the side of the cover opposite to Wifi antenna. Reception is not great either, but it doesn’t bother me too much.
My pocket is the daily driver. With upgraded batteries and a sharge that can keep the thing running for a week, it’s the perfect little working rig.
Also I attached a thin metal plate to the heat spreader on the lid and my sharge external drive (with its sick little fan) just sucks the heat straight away. The full sized hdmi port, extra USB A, and 4tb of storage doesn’t hurt either. Magsafe connector on the pd port of the pocket keeps the port free of dust and crud, and I have a meter on the cable because I’m a nerd and I like numbers.
that’s really awesome, mine’s rocking a modem too, haven’t swapped my sim just yet but I will be in the next week or so
damn where did you get that? that sounds awesome and from the photo it looks like it’s not too big either. how many man does it have? what batteries do you have in the Pocket itself? do you fully shut it down or just lock the screen when idle? i’m curious how you’re getting such extreme battery life
that’s really clever, how’s the temps look in operation?
that’s a vibe, I get it, I kinda need to replace my KB’s mini OLED at some point bc I left it on the battery screen long enough to cause burn in (oops)
also I really love the touch of having this thread pulled up in the photos lol, and the stickers all over are absolutely exquisite
Convinced that it only makes sense to use Open-Source Hardware alongside Open-Source Software, I’ve been closely following the MNT-Reform Project for quite some time. I was lucky enough to see the Classic-Reform at FrOSCon 2024 at one of the exhibitors’ booths and was very impressed. Shortly thereafter, I ordered it and have been using it for over a year as my primary work tool (Office, CAD, 3D printing) to my complete satisfaction.
The Pocket Reform, which I recently added to my collection, still needs to find its place. As I approach retirement, I can easily imagine using it for research at the city library or afterward at a café … 
A big thank you to Minute and his team, and especially to Josch for his tireless work here on the forum!
Sharge was having this big blow out sale, so I paid something like half price for the battery and drive unit. I’ll post some btop pics with the thing under load. As for the internal Batts, I shifted to a pair of 706090 5000mah. Had to go through the whole discharge recharge thing a few times, and have noticed a small gain in battery life. The external battery is another 24000mah, so between the two, I’ve got some serious go. The external can draw 100watts from the desktop charger setup I have too, so when it starts getting low its wicked fast to top back up.
My use case probably has the most to do with why I’m not cooking through the battery. Web browsing, reading (and honestly, my xteink x4 has been doing some real lifting in that space lately, so the pocket now just manages the library via calibre)
.f
if i may suggest, making it into a custom cellphone alternative since the keys are (imo) much easier to use than an on screen keyboard on most phones. with an SSD of a good size you could also load up some movies on there for watching at the cafe with headphones, and i could see using it for extra resources while studying at the library to be amazing. maybe if you got a mini blu ray player you could even plug that in and watch movies right there at the library, assuming they have any.
Really cool setup! So does this Sharge Disk thing works as a dock, with HDMI and all? that might be a good solution for the port wear issue.
