It’s 2021, and it’s time to upgrade your smartphone. Maybe it’s getting slow, it might be damaged, or your device’s OEM refuses to update your version of Android. Whatever the reason, you set your budget and full of hope and starry-eyed about all the possibilities, you go to your preferred electronics store (or carrier, if you’re American) – and as you scroll through the possible phones, your hopes are shattered and your heart sinks in your shoes. Your choices are between an endless array of black slabs, and while you can technically choose between Android and iOS, you will have most likely made that specific choice ages ago, and switching platforms is hard.
Cosmo Communicator running Ubuntu Touch shows what should have been
JC Torres - Jan 27, 2021, 3:56am CST
We basically have a two-horse race in the mobile market but there was never a shortage of attempts to have a third contender. There’s Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Windows Mobile attempts, of course, as well as Nokia’s spiritual successor Jolla. And then there’s Ubuntu Touch, so far still the most successful attempt to bring a mainstream Linux OS to commercial phones. Canonical basically giving up on that effort ironically caused Ubuntu Touch to become available on even more devices and the Cosmo Communicator is probably one of the best examples of what an Ubuntu phone should have been.
The keyboard lives! While we wait for the upcoming 2021 BlackBerry smartphone, the keyboard aficionados at Planet Computers in the UK just showed us its first 5G entry, the Astro Slide 5G.
Once dominant, keyboarded smartphones kick around the edges of the industry now. Planet, formed from Psion PDA die-hards, has made a few. There s also FxTec s Pro1 and upcoming Pro1 X. Onward Mobility, which bought the license to the BlackBerry name, promises a keyboarded BlackBerry smartphone this year.
The Astro Slide s ridged keys look fun to type on.
Planet has done a clamshell keyboarded phone before; the big UI innovation here is that this is the company s first phone that works just as well closed as it does open, with a big 2,340-by-1,080, 6.4-inch screen that slides up to reveal the keyboard.
We have been sold a lemon here
Matthew Hughes Wed 13 Jan 2021 // 10:12 UTC Share
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The final spec published earlier this week shows the phone shipping with a MediaTek Dimensity 800 platform, rather than the more powerful Dimensity 1000 initially promised.
The Dimensity 800 is a mid-range chip, whereas the 1000 targets higher-end devices. This is reflected in the configuration. In addition to containing a weaker GPU and APU, the Dimensity 800 represents somewhat of a downgrade in CPU performance, touting four Cortex-A76 cores at 2GHz, compared to four newer Cortex-A77 cores clocked at 2.6GHz. It also lacks support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth Low Energy Audio.