I recently purchased a Planet Computers -Gemini and thought I would do a brief review and share my thoughts about a come back of what is essentially a modern day Psion Series 5MX.
To give you a bit of background about myself I am an IT professional, beginning in the early 1990’s for ICL as a field technician working on various Intel X86 based devices ranging from home PC’s to company servers. I supported and managed servers and large infrastructures for around 15 years before transitioning into IT Security, for the last 12 or so years I have worked mainly for financial and Telecom companies.
During my career I have gained a vast experience of supporting a wide range of computers but predominantly Windows based with Unix coming a close second, this mix is common in most of the world’s corporate infrastructures, more recently Apple Macs are making inroads into the work place where as previously they resided mainly in Graphic or Marketing businesses or departments due to their rich DTP and graphics software.
Through out my career of supporting servers and or infrastructures the ability to be able to remotely administer a server was in the beginning a bonus which then later changed into a necessity, in the beginning expensive hardware such as KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) consoles had to be procured until Terminal Services appeared, this was critical especially when most Data Centres were being relocated separately from the corporate offices, if like me you were the IT Manager of a small business you were effectively on call 24/7 which meant you could get a call at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon while choosing frozen peas in the cold section at the local supermarket, so if you had the ability to manage a server from a pocketable device, even slowly, it could save a lot of time and hassle. In the early 90`s a break through piece of software called VNC made mobile remote management a reality, better still there was even a version compatible with the Nokia Communicator 9000 (Geos OS). Using the Dial Up Netwoking function and the GSM network meant that you could remotely mange a server from anywhere as long as you had a signal. Although it was painfully slow and the screen refresh would take seconds it was a revelation, once you have this flexibility it was near impossible to relinquish, to give you an example, while on holiday in St Ives in Cornwall I received a call from work by a director in a panic that the Exchange Server had crashed and asking if I could take a look at it, St Ives is in a part of the UK about as far away west of London that you can get, think of a circa 1800’s fishing village and your not far off, at this time I was sitting in this picturesque harbour eating Fish and Chips, so I took out my Nokia 9110 and proceeded to dial in to the company modem and bring the Exchange Server back to life (those of you that are interested the Services had stopped and needed to be restarted) due to this the Nokia Communicator range became the defacto tool for a Sysadmin, later when WiFi and 3G became the norm this arduous task became a breeze, but then Nokia in there wisdom decided to end the Communicator range with the E90.
In the 1990’s Psion was producing a line of quality PDA`s , the most notable being the 5MX, this PDA was notable due to its fully QWERTY tactile keyboard which with practice could be used to touch type on. Loaded with productivity Apps such as Agenda and Data it was as close to a mini laptop as you could get, mini laptops at the time such as the Toshiba Libretto or Sony C1 picture book were great but they were slow and the battery life was measured in minutes and not hours so they were of limited use. HP tried to produce a PDA with a full keyboard in the Journada range but these were all horrible to use due to the OS (Win CE), I had a HP Journada 720 which although was a quality piece of hardware it was a miserable user experience, the Psion 5MX was superior in every way but with out peripherals it lacked networking. After the 5MX Psion tried to diversify into other markets which unfortunately failed and it eventually disappeared.
Fast forward to 2018 and a start up called Planet Computers have had the courage to produce a PDA which has the Psion 5MX`s DNA, using the original designer but with modern hardware and connectivity. At a time when the rest of the world has gone the fondle slab route Planet Computers has decided to recreate a piece of PDA history, this is a bold move and should be applauded, I believe that the transition to slab sided devices has stifled design and uniqueness, if I was to line up 10 of the top phone handsets you would be hard pressed to tell them apart unless the manufacturer has seen fit to put their name on the front, the same can be said for tablets, even the hardware specs will be very similar with the only differentiator being the OS, where as if you were to line up 10 phones from the late 90’s you could tell who the manufacturer was just by looking at the form factor and or design, in my view this is a great pity, kids will never know what its like to flip open your phone or hit a button and a keypad slides out, although they probably don`t care. If you don’t believe me try this, walk into any branch of CEX, go to the phone section and without reading the labels try and tell which phone is made by who and which model it is, I was in the mobile telecoms industry for many years and I struggle to tell them apart.
The new Gemini PDA was released at the beginning of 2018 after a successful crowd funding campaign, based on Android 7.1 but with some mods for the landscape screen the functionality is the same as any other 7.1 handset apart from some Planet Computer apps, Agenda and Data have made a reappearance – Yay. The device sports a 10 core processor from MediaTek and 4GB ram, it has 64GB on board storage but is able to be expanded by SD cards. The 4G version is dual sim by using a physical sim and an e-sim, the piste de resistance is the fact that it can dual or treble boot into Android, Linux (Debian) and Sailfish OS’s, ala Nokia N900. At present there are some rough edges with Android that Planet has promised to polish and will release a fully working version of Debian and Sailfish OS 3 by the end of 2018. The device has a 5.9 inch screen with stereo speakers, on the front there is a 5MP camera for video calls and selfies (Seriously!) and there is also a second 5MP camera that can be retro fitted to the rear case, this can be bought separately and is easy to install. Planet have also produced a range of accessories that includes a leather sleeve case, a USB-C hub which has a wired network port and a USB-C to HDMI adapter to compliment the device and give it the ability to behave like a docked laptop. Speed of the device is inline with most mid range phones and the screen is both reactive and smooth. Some owners have complained about the sound quality but I have found it to be fine and no worse than my Pixel 2 XL. Having used Nokia Communicators for the last 20 years I am regarded as old school (or just old) as I prefer to use a physical keyboard and pointers than an on-screen keyboard and swiping the screen (Although the Gemini also has a touch screen so you have the choice), the keyboard on the Gemini is a joy to use as long as you remember it is not full size and allowances have to made. Having worked for Vodafone a while ago for 6 years I had had every flagship device from all the manufacturers and I was among the first to try the Iphone 2 when we evaluated it but I still used to go back to my trusty old N900, it was quirky, unstable and could be frustrating but I would always forgive it when you booted it into a fully working distro of Debian and plugged it into a 46 inch TV. So when I first came across the Gemini that promised to provide the same functionality but with up to date hardware and software I had to have one, so far it has been all that I expected and more, it has also caused a lot of interest at work, everyone immediately thought I had brought in an old 5MX until they noticed the differences, and then the questions started. The opinions were exactly as you would expect, oldies like me were blown away that someone has released a modern successor to the 5MX with modern hardware and features and when I booted it into Debian there was nearly a round of applause, the younger of us (we call them nappies) thought it looked cool but asked what the keyboard was for….sigh. I use it as a second device for those times when you actually want to write a long email or this article for example, I use OneNote heavily for note taking and Office 365 as its fully integrated and I feel it is more suited to physical keyboards, where as for quickly checking an email or a text message a current handset is more suitable. My primary devices are a Pixel 2 XL and a Samsung Note 8, I use one for personal use and one for work use, but, and this surprised me, I have started to use the Gemini for more work related activities such as email and work Skype calls. We are a full Microsoft House and our meetings are all via Business Skype, this is due to the fact that we have many offices all over the world and most if not all of the meetings require the attendance of colleagues that are thousands of miles away on different continents, the Gemini is the perfect form factor for just placing on a table in front of you and conducting a Skype call using the front facing camera.
The Gemini has replaced a year old Samsung Tablet which I think is testament to the fact that Planet have got it right.
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