What a surprise!
I must admit I kind of saw this one coming. In a video interview from about the time of the Cosmo release in Japan, I seem to recall Dr. Janko hinting they were already thinking about 5G. No details were given, but when MediaTek, shortly after, revealed their Dimensity 1000 5G SoC, I was pretty sure Planet would use that chip. I didn't
know it would be a slider, but as the Gemini was "a PDA", with phone support, and the Cosmo "a Communicator", i.e. a mini laptop-ish thing, it felt reasonable their third attempt would be "a smartphone", hopefully able to attract a slightly bigger market share.
I got upset at first, thinking they, for the love of decency, ought to get the Cosmo (and Gemini) actually DONE before lusting for new hardware. Thinking again, I realized their hands might be rather forced. Crowdfunding for fairly simple things, can get money, have perks made, shipped and (yes, I'm simplifying) mostly be done. Smartphones are not simple. They need to be maintained and repaired for some time, so Planet Computers needs to keep paying for a staff, an office and a repair shop. Ideally, their web shop sales would cover those costs, and give them some profit. As they're currently struggling hard to, at all, get their perks shipped in working order, their costs are reasonably through the roof, and I'm a bit surprised they haven't folded.
To stay in business, I think they pretty much had to launch another campaign, and hope it won't be quite as messy as the other ones. That may divert some resources away from fixing firmware bugs in the Cosmo and Gemini, but other than shutting down, I don't think they had that much of a choice. Also, the people designing the hardware, probably aren't same as those making and fixing the firmware. The Cosmo hardware is done and we are far away from needing the first beta firmware for the Astro, so I'm not so sure those projects will compete that much over resources. I do think the current state of the Cosmo
is taking resources away from the Gemini though.
So, what do I expect? Mostly another premium-ish priced mid-market phone with a Planet keyboard, which I think is the best we can hope for, from a tiny vendor, in a market heavily stacked against smaller firms. They're not going to sell a million Astros. They're not getting access to Snapdragon chips or Samsung cameras any time soon. It is kind of interesting that the Cosmo has a Samsung camera *sensor* which, in a Samsung camera module with Samsung software, would likely be quite good, but without premium stuff on all levels, the end product isn't going to be stellar, in spite of its name. Though, with four A77, four A55 cores and the other parts, the Dimensity 1000, to me, looks like a decent part.
Am I going for it? Yes, I have backed it, but, much like Maki Jouni already said, I'm not in any hurry this time. The non-backlit keyboard and the barely-barcode-capable camera of the Gemini turned out so painful that the Cosmo couldn't come soon enough, and while not all that great, the Cosmo is my daily driver now. Unless it physically breaks, I expect to reasonably happily keep using it, until something better comes along. Yes, it crashes more than I'd like, the CoDi is wonky and the camera isn't up to spec, but I can live with those things. Even now, it's a lot more stable than my first smartphone, a 2003 Motorola A920, ever got (Swedish users may understand why I used to call it my "Tregelsten" - my brick from Three) and I expect the Cosmo to improve somewhat with time. In the best of worlds, I may have contributed a tad to give Planet some room to also improve the Gemini a bit. Even if mine just sits in a cupboard right now, I'm keeping it, if nothing else, as a spare phone, should my Cosmo fail.
One thing they
might have learned, is that these things takes time. They thought the Gemini would be done in... was it nine months? And the Cosmo in... seven? This time, they're at least giving themselves eleven months. Had that not been the case, I would not have backed this project. If they could now ALSO learn to communicate on a strict schedule, things could be less nerve wrecking this time. I wouldn't mind if Planet got more open about how how much is done by their subcontractors. There's no shame in that. That way, their explanations, when subcontractors runs into issues, would sound less like excuses.
I hope they'll be done by June/July 2021, and I predict it will be really hard to make that novel RockUp slider reliable, based off of what East Aeon can do. On the other hand, clever hinges has been a theme since the days of the Psion Series 3, so if anyone can dot it, I'd bet on Martin Riddiford.
