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A Psion Palmtop Successor Has Arrived and It Runs Android and Linux (pocket-lint.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the best-of-both-worlds dept.

dryriver writes: A lot of people probably remember the 1990s palmtop computers made by Psion fondly. The clamshell-design palmtops were pocketable, black and white, but had a working stylus and a fantastic tactile foldout QWERTY keyboard that you could type pretty substantial documents on or even write code with. A different company -- Planet Computers -- has now produced a spiritual successor to the old Psion palmtops called the Gemini PDA that is much like an old Psion but with the latest Android smartphone hardware in it and a virtually identical tactile keyboard. It can also dual boot to Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Sailfish) alongside Android. The technical specs are a MediaTek deca-core processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage (plus microSD slot), 4G, 802.11c Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, eSIM support, and 4,220mAh battery. The screen measures in at 5.99-inches with a 2,160 x 1,080 (403ppi) resolution. The only thing missing seems to be the stylus -- but perhaps that would have complicated manufacturing of this niche-device in its first production run.

3 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. That's old model by thechanklybore · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Gemini PDA has been around for about a year - I was one of the backers. The more interesting one is this:

    https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

    This will actually fully replace your phone with a Palm-style computer, unlike the Gemini, which I've since sold.

  2. Big question how good is the software ? by Crashmarik · · Score: 3, Informative

    As it stands the specs are damn good, if it had a GPIO bus it would be absolutely perfect.

    But if you have ever played with these niche devices, it's all on how good the software is. I have a bunch of ARM devices with Linux and Android distributions that the dreaded "Not optimized for your device" or can't even install comes up on.

  3. Re: What's missing is RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    He's right you know. I'm running Fedora 29 x86_64, Cinnamon Spin. Browser open with 7 tabs (4 slashdot, 3 youtube - one playing a 1080p video), music player running, VLC playing a 1080p h264 video, LibreOffice Writer is open.

    Mem: 16035 (Total) 2353 (Used) 10777 (Free) 157 (Shared) 2904 (Cache) 13239 (Available)

    I mean, I don't imagine running all this on this PDA at once. And I sure as hell won't be running virtual machines or compiling.

    At which point is a laptop the more appropriate choice?