The Planet Computers Gemini is one of two of the only genuinely interesting smartphones on sale today. It captures a zeitgeist of modern phone development while being completely different to the rest of the market of Black Rectangles.
Part of that zeitgeist is that the phone is no longer a phone. For the vast majority of customers the number of minutes and texts in their monthly allowance is irrelevant. It’s all about the gigabytes.
The second element is retro. The splash Nokia made with the 3310 in 2017 and to a lesser extent the 8110 reboot this year has shown a lust for the past.
The Gemini plays to both of these trends by being a genuinely pocket computer. With a full, decent, keyboard you can touch type on, and in borrowing 1997 technology to do it. The Gemini is a Psion Series 5 rebooted.
It was a crowdfunded project, announced at Mobile World Congress 2017 with the first units shipping just ahead of the 2018 event. This is spectacular. The major mobile device manufacturers take longer than that to develop an iteration of existing devices. That’s with substantial development departments, supplier relationships and development processes. Planet has built an innovative device to a very tight timescale from a small office in Kensington.
Equally spectacular is how the crowdfunding community has taken to the Gemini. Originally looking to raise $300,000 the target was overfunded by 284% and has gone on to sales just shy of $2m.
The name of the twins comes from a choice of Android or Linux as the operating system. Of course the original Psion ran EPOC (Electronic Piece of Cheese) which begat Symbian the OS which kicked off the whole smartphone thing.
So as modern as the-phone-you-don’t-talk-on might be, this has a strong wiff of retro and in keeping with that I’ll take a leaf out of Personal Computer World the magazine which ran from 1978 to 2009. It was the foremost title in the UK and reviewed the vast majority of computers before anyone else.
A tradition on PCW was that we wrote the review on the computer we were reviewing. So in tribute this phone review is being written on the device it is about.
Let’s start with the appearance. It’s a laptop which has been through the downsizing experience. The metal casing gives it a quality feel. Mobile devices have got so light it’s no longer an issue. At 320g the Gemini is very pocketable. Think about how a Zippo lighter feels better than a Cricket, that’s down to density and the Gemini is reassuringly dense. The travel on the keyboard is good too. I’d like a bit more squidge but it’s certainly up to the 1300 words of this review. Key spacing is a bit tight but that’s a compromise which is necessary for the form factor. The keyboard is one of the two hallmark features, the other is the hinge this snaps open and shut in a great, reassuring way. Cool hinges are a Psion trait and the Gemini cleverly springs open the back to support the device. There is only one position of open but while this is an issue with a full-sized laptop, a palmtop can be slid around so that the viewing angle is right. A springy metal support isn’t perfect for stability, on a hard surface a heavy press on the number keys will bounce the device a little.
There are two USB type C ports one on either end of the unit. The left one for charging, this means the Gemini can be plugged into a big screen and charged at the same time.
There is a headphone socket and a button which is software configurable. There is an expectation that it will be used for dual boot selecting Linux.
On the lid there is the earphone and microphone and a row of software definable LEDs. There is a Planet logo. A shutline shows the edge of the spring for the hinge. The front edge prises off with a special tool to reveal the expansion options: the micro SIM slot, micro USB and camera option. The external camera was an addition made at the behest of crowd-funders. A 5 megapixel camera drops into a slot on the top with a new cover to enable it. I prefer the look of the device without the external camera, but it’s amazing how much you miss it when you don’t have one – snapping the odd document to send to someone or scanning a QR code.
The tool can be used to remove the bottom of the case and access the removable battery. Just having two USB-C ports, micro SD and a removeable battery ticks lots of boxes for the discerning mobile device owner.
The screen is 2160 x 1080 pixels, which gives a dpi of 403. That’s up with the top tier of phones but with the way you use a Gemini, with it on your lap or on a desk, it’s perhaps overkill. The edges of the screen disappear under the bezel. The processor in the first 1000 devices is a MediaTek 6797T. This is an eight core X25 processor, and not the ten core X27 which was supposed to have been shipped. Planet having been short-changed by the factory. How much this matters gets complicated. The original announcement was for an X25, and that’s what the first 1000 backers will have signed up for. The announcement of the upgrade to an X27 was made during development so while it’s uncomfortable that the first backers have got a device which isn’t as quick as the later ones it’s something Planet has decided to roll with.
So how well does it work?
It’s a rubbish phone. You can answer it when closed by pressing the button on the top but there is no CLI which is a little discombobulating for both you and the caller. I got very confused as to which way to hold it, until resorting to the manual I found that it’s intelligent and switches the speaker and microphone depending on which way up it is. Very clever but I would have preferred the engineering effort to have gone into the audio quaility. Not only does it sound poor, people I speak to regularly complain.
To be a better phone it really needs to take a lesson from the Nokia Communicator and have an external display and keypad. But perhaps it doesn’t need to be a better phone.
It’s a fantastic productivity device. Sitting in a pub waiting for a friend I can do proper work, supporting customers on Live Chat, co-operating with colleagues on Slack and rattling out a document.
Some Android apps don’t quite know what to make of a landscape phone with a keyboard. Word frequently pops up the soft keyboard over the document you are working on. Outlook is deeply frustrating. Web pages can be even worse, but not having to toggle between letters and numbers when entering a postcode is rather nice. If necessary you can hold the unit sideways and ignore the keyboard.
For some uses it’s significantly better than a phone. Not just wordprocessing. Video calling works well, albeit not as flattering as having the camera high.
The best aspect of the software is the Planet apps bar. This mimics the Psion toolbar which was a set of fixed functions. The Planet bar is soft so you can define which apps you want. It makes task switching very quick.
When mobile phones were still A New Thing they were sold on how productive they made you. It became the reason for buying a Blackberry, that’s disappeared from the rhetoric, but then the Gemini is a retro device. It will make you more productive, and something else I’ve not encountered for a long time. It’s something corporates should look at long and hard, they will see a proper old-fashioned return on investment. Me? I like it for being different, not being a black rectangle and that it’s the only phone does which fits the bill on this, at least until the other interesting phone comes along.
