It's not Linux, but you can roughly get this form factor with mainstream devices without having to take a risk on small companies or crowdfunded projects. There are hinged laptop-style cases for the iPad Mini. iPadOS is generally good with keyboard shortcuts so that would be a decent combo as long as you can put up with the limitations of the OS.
Zagg sells a hinged keyboard that works with 7 inch tablets. I bought one alongside an Amazon Fire 7 inch during a black friday sale. Thought it would be fun to have a mini laptop for around $50. The two worked well in conjunction. Was even almost pocketable. But the Fire was slow. If someone spent all their time in Termux, the Fire might have been fast enough.
It's a pity the 7 inch Windows tablets didn't sell well and have largely vanished from the market. One could install Linux on them, and use them with something like the Zagg keyboard.
I guess there's one more possible option. Boox's eink tablets have support for BT keyboards. Pair the 8 inch model with one of the hinged keyboards. As long as the screen can keep up with the typing (I have no idea) that might work well.
> There are hinged laptop-style cases for the iPad Mini
This still makes for a very different form factor to the original Psion devices, which are much more letterbox shaped than most small tablets, more akin to phones. Doing this you end up with something more like a modern "netbook".
You could slip a Psion 3a comfortably into the inside pocket of many suits, not a trick you can do with many 7 inch tablet toting a keyboard case as well.
Arguably a typical touchscreen phone with a hypothetical hinged clamshell keyboard case would be a lot closer, but of course not everything works in landscape on an iPhone.
The short-lived Motorola Droid is some of the closest anything in the smartphone era got to the spirit of the original devices for me:
I have used a boox tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard (actually an iPad keyboard with hinges) there is nontrivial latency while typing, but I found it was quite manageable. It just forces you to keep more of the command or line of text in your head. I found myself writing on it a lot. Even did a little programming.
Interesting, when or which device did you try this on?
On my Boox Nova 3, typing via the BT Keyboard is pretty much instant, no noticable delay. Though in Word or Outlook it helps to choose the faster screen mode. No issues in Termux though.
Zagg sells a hinged keyboard that works with 7 inch tablets. I bought one alongside an Amazon Fire 7 inch during a black friday sale. Thought it would be fun to have a mini laptop for around $50. The two worked well in conjunction. Was even almost pocketable. But the Fire was slow. If someone spent all their time in Termux, the Fire might have been fast enough.
It's a pity the 7 inch Windows tablets didn't sell well and have largely vanished from the market. One could install Linux on them, and use them with something like the Zagg keyboard.
I guess there's one more possible option. Boox's eink tablets have support for BT keyboards. Pair the 8 inch model with one of the hinged keyboards. As long as the screen can keep up with the typing (I have no idea) that might work well.