Lately, the need to lighten the load on my bag has become painfully evident... literally, my back and neck hurt from all the stuff I take to school, and somebody proposed to me the prospect of switching out my big, heavy epic gamer laptop for my iPhone 11. Currently, I use Notepad++ on Windows 10 with NVDA and a Focus 40 with computer Braille to take notes for my math course along with a Victor Reader to record the lectures and an Orion TI-84 for crunching numbers. I access Canvas via Firefox to see upcoming assignments, and that's pretty much it. I figure if this could be viable, all I would need is my phone, my braille display, and a bluetooth keyboard. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Is this viable?
How reliable is US English 8-dot computer Braille on iOS? I'm familiar with its quirks about pressing space with dots 7 and 8 to delete and return, respectively (for some reason), but what would the best text editor for this sort of thing be? I want to stick to .txt files to avoid any formatting weirdness, especially when it comes to typing out equations and other math content, so something like MS Word would be overkill for this. I also want to find out if there are enough keystroke commands to minimize the amount of screen touches needed. I'd rather not be taking my hands off and swiping every time I want to do something besides typing. Currently, I have 2 txt files open and I switch between them with ctrl+tab, and I very rarely switch to a different app unless I need to look something up. Can this be replicated on an iphone with a keyboard and/or braille display? More importantly, is there an easy way of transferring these txt files over to a Windows machine once I get home? Will Canvas work through Safari on iOS? If not, the worst case is I wait until I get home to look at all that stuff which isn't that big a deal. The health of my spine is more important to me at the moment. I figure the worst case for getting those files onto my main machine is emailing them to myself.
I suspect an iphone won't be enough for more complex workloads, but this semester I've found myself in the unique position of only having one in-person course and not requiring any specialized or complex software in order to complete it beyond a text editor and internet browser. Also, I'd rather not buy a tablet or smaller laptop right now because money's a bit tight.
Lastly, is there some hardware I can use to output my phone's screen to HDMI? I frequently hook up my laptop to the projector to present and show my work to my sighted peers, and that's important for my grade.