Reiwa's PDA has evolved into a smartphone. UK Planet starts accepting general sales reservations for physical QWERTY "Astro Slide 5G" Sumahon!!
British company Planet Computers has started general sales reservation for "Astro Slide 5G Transformer". The price is £ 729, about 113,600 yen in Japanese yen. Pre-order now and it will be shipped after March 22nd.
This product has been solicited for investment on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The price was 536 euros (approximately 70,000 yen) when the author invested, and is currently 573 euros (approximately 75,000 yen).
Planet is a company in which the developers of that historic PDA maker British Psion also participate. Released the Gemini PDA and Cosmo Communicator, which are reminiscent of Psion, and the latest in the series is the Android smartphone "Astro Slide" equipped with physical slide QWERTY. In addition to Android 11, Linux is also available.
This work can be used in "vertical screen while closed". It can be used more like a smartphone. Many Android applications assume a vertical screen, and although there was a utility that forced you to use the horizontal screen, it was honestly difficult to use. With this, you can use apps that are difficult to use on the horizontal screen in vertical mode, so it is comfortable for perverted dilettantes like us who want to complete everything with this one device.
By the way, Planet held an event for Indiegogo investors in Tokyo last year, and CEO Janko Mrsic-Flogel took the stage. I was showing off the actual machine.
Tilt up with a unique slider hinge structure. A keyboard that inherits Psion's DNA. With the Gemini PDA, the feeling of keystrokes was not good and I was worried about missing keys, but I felt that it had been greatly improved over the years. The keyboard backlight also supports automatic brightness adjustment. When closed, it can be used as a smartphone, and when opened, it can be used as a PDA. It is an irresistible one for maniacs.
Astro Slide's key layout is the same as the series, for better or worse. The author modified the IME application to make it an apk, and assigned Japanese-English switching and hyphens to keys that were not used frequently. I think other users were also remodeling the key assignments as they liked. Since the key assignment utility is also provided by default in this work, it seems that the threshold for that point will be low.
The screen is 6.39-inch AMOLED (2340 x 1080), the camera sensor is made by Sony with 48 million pixels, supports Qi wireless charging, the SoC is MediaTek Dimensity 800, the execution memory is 8GB, and the storage is 128GB. The physical SIM slot is nanoSIM card x 2 + microSD card slot. There is a 3.5mm earphone jack.
The point is that the second slot does not share the microSD card slot and is not exclusive. Capacity can be expanded while using dual SIM
Supported bands are as follows. It also supports 4G platinum band B8/18/19 and 5G n77/n78/n79, and can be used by four domestic MNOs.
Mobile Modem: Dual 5G + 4G Worldwide
Mobile Radio: 5G/4G/3G/2G
5G NR: Band 1, 3, 28, 38, 41, 77, 78, 79
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
CDMA: 850/1900MHz BC0 BC1+ EVDO
WCDMA FDD: Band 1, 2, 5, 6, 8
VoLTE: VoLTE, ViLTE, VoWiFi compatible
LTE FDD: Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 38, 39, 40, 41, 66, 71 / TDD 34, 38, 39, 40, 41
WiFi: Wi-Fi 5 (2T2R) 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
USA: Tested on T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon networks
The Planet product users are 25.6% in Japan, 20.7% in the US, and 12.2% in the UK. Germany 9.8%, other 31.7%, Japan is actually the top.
Is the weight over 300g a concern? I'm used to the Galaxy Z Fold3 and UMPC, so I'm willing to put up with this kind of perverted device, but ordinary people may want to keep it in mind.
This machine has been greatly delayed due to the corona crisis and the lack of semiconductors, but I am happy that it was successfully completed and general sales were announced. I'm looking forward to landing on investors and starting shipping for general sales.
Sandwiched between the author's Galaxy Z Fold3 and W-ZERO3