I mentioned this in another thread but I thought it was worth making its own.
The Vive Flow's biggest strength is how easy it is, compared to other VR headsets, to just pull it out and put it on like a pair of glasses. No straps, which a lot of people with short hair probably don't realize how big a barrier to casual use that can be to some of us. And it's so lightweight and relatively comfortable.
And it's biggest weakness is... basically everything that was sacrificed to make it that way, which means it's never going to compete as a piece of hardcore gaming hardware. Which is fine as HTC doesn't appear to be marketing it that way, but it doesn't seem like they know how to make it useful for anything else, either.
If it's going to be more than a novelty toy, it needs keyboard support. Are people having virtual meetings supposed to take notes by waving their (5G, processor-heavy) phones around like a magic wand at the cumbersome onscreen keyboard? And meetings aside, HTC came very close to creating the perfect virtual office in a can for the business traveler... except we can't bring a keyboard or mouse with us into the virtual space.
I would love to be able to sync input and pointer devices with the Flow directly using its Bluetooth. The capability is clearly there, unused. But honestly, I've already got the keyboards I would use with it synced with my phone. Is there any reason that the controller app can't simply intercept keyboard input received by the phone the same way it captures screen input and pass it through to the Flow?
If HTC makes keyboard compatibility happen either way, I will be telling all my writing friends that they could all enjoy a cozy, private writing nook anywhere they happen to be for a one-time price in hardware investment. Overnight I would become the biggest Vive fan and Flow booster imaginable. But until then, it's not much more use to me than a toy. It's fine for watching YouTube videos that I queued up on my account on an actual computer, okay as a private virtual cinema, diverting occasionally as an actual VR device, but I can only use it for work in phone mode, awkwardly switching the controller app on and off depending on if I need to interact with apps on the phone or with the view controls for the Flow, and hoping the Miracast connection remains stable.
At the price tag, I can't give a fulsome recommendation to anyone else based on its moderate entertainment purposes. But as an early adopter, I hope to see its functionality grow. Please let us use keyboards. Even if you can't immediately add pass-through keyboard view or something fancy like that, the touch-typists of the world will still thank you.