Welcome to those from the Indiegogo forum

[Pikku-iikka]

Hello from my living rooms' cozy cyber area...

Here follows a little introduction and an at the same time an expression of satisfaction for reaching this possibly greatforthcoming Cosmo community. While I'm not a developer of any kind, I've always been interested in somehow 'different' equipment which is not the mainstream stuff. And also following discussions from which I do not understand a bit... Now, the Cosmo will be a thing that one could also work with, but I've always liked to 'play' with stuff too - not games per se but...

When people up here in Finland had Commodore 64's and most moved to PC's, I went the Sinclairs' ZX81 - Spectrum - QL way (a weird way it was especially with the latest one), then found the Amiga which was my partner for a long time (and still *lives* inside my first Raspberry and PC). First phone was a Panasonic, then Ericssons little brick like thingy with a GPRS modem - a wonderful companion to my Psion 5. Nokias N900 (Maemo with a keyboard) and N9 (Meego) were jewels, the latter is still in occasional use. From there to get a Jolla phone as soon as it was announced was a natural consequence. My now 6 years old Jolla was just born again in my pocket with Sailfish 3. Works fluently.

I cant't describe the feeling when I accidentally found out from Jolla's blog about agreement with Planet Computers. Never had heard a word of Gemini and Cosmo. Good old Psion keyboard and the same man behind the devices. And the Sailfish contract, oooohh'. It took really a few minutes and I too was a Cosmo backer at IndieGoGo.

I am sure I am going to have some very fine moments and 'play'time ahead with the Cosmo. There was one Martin Riddiford interview, where he described his writing style. First putting in a lot of text, then starting to re-organize and edit. Many times too frustrating with a touchscreen. But easy with a keyboard. I'm like him in that matter. Maybe I shall type my first ever novel with Cosmo.

There's one thing that I do not like the Cosmo - the name itself. Reminds me too much of the CCR drummer once upon good times, Doug ”Cosmo” Clifford. Well, maybe the name is from there, men @ Planet may have been CCR fans. And maybe I shall rename the thingy in my hands after my wife.

Btw, Cosmo and Gemini do not carry a brand name like probably all phones and computers do. Couldn't they have been officially, say, Planet Gemini and Planet Cosmo, as devices of the same brand. Cosmo is in a way a re-born Gemini. Now part of the big public do not necessarily understand that the maker of these superb machines is the same and has two devices already.

There you have it - as a good end, my Logitech seems to be out of batteries at this moment...

[drpeter]

And maybe I shall rename the thingy in my hands after my wife.

   I was always an Atari man back in the day, starting with the 400.  My girlfriend at the time christened it Fifi because I spent so much time with it she was jealous...

... And Fifi has been my constant companion ever since. I got her out and dusted her down for a game of Star Raiders for old time's sake only this week  

[Entwisi]

*waves*
  so started with these IT things back in 1981 when I bought my ZX81 after getting hooked on the schools Commodore PET 8K. still own it and the two VIC-20s that followed. Missed the ST/Amiga phase out and got back in with 286 PC which was sold to buy my now wifes engagement ring. done a few jobs in my life from selling esoteric Hi Fi to running pub restaurants to working in a Call centre but have somehow managed a career in IT for the last 22 years. currently a VP in a blue chip org as a geek on java/Middleware/DB/risk etc in production environments.

phone wise also always been a bit non mainstream, sanyo mobile phone anyone else? whist the in crowd were 3310 I was siemens, when they went N95, I was e90( still got ) , when they went iphone I went N900(still got), 5" Android? yeh, I was there with a Dell Streak.. however I've always prefers a HKB so soon found my way back to a Bberry passport(still got), Priv and currently driving a KeyOne.

I'm also a full on Petrolhead... bikes, cars, anything with an ICE is good by me  

Can't wait to get my Cosmo as and when its ready, I've always been happy to be in teh bleeding edge of stuff and am not the sort to winge when being there occasionally cuts me.

So thats me.. looking forward to being part of a new merry bunch of freaks and weirdos..

[vader]

Welcome! We are friendly freaks and weirdos here  I never had a sanyo, but I've had a fairly eclectic bunch of phones over the years (including the passport). Still got most of them collecting dust. Sounds like we don't have very long to wait now - then the fun starts!

[Zarhan]

Hi, thanks for the account.

My reason for wanting Cosmo is that I've always liked to have my "phone" with full keyboard. I got Nokia E90 almost 20 years ago, then N900 when it was new. I have been thinking about replacing it, but suddenly it seemed that all phones with full keyboards vanished from the market (with the exception of Priv). So yeah, while I want to use it as phone, I also need to produce text (mostly for server/network admin tasks which are nicer to do if I don't have to whip out a laptop every time). Luckily my N900 has been working fine - only real problem is lack of TLS 1.2 support which means that lots of websites have become inaccessible unless I proxy via a TLS-upgrading squid. Fortunately e.g. Exchange sync to O365 still works fine.

My only beef with upcoming cosmo are it's dimensions - E90 was 13 cm in length, N900 is 11 cm - cosmo is *much* larger. Means it no longer attaches nicely to a belt case. But I guess I can live with that.

[Lord Wessex]

Damn fine good evening one and all, thank you for holding the door open. A busy weekend ahead but looking to engage on the subject of the CC as an avid backer.

[maki.jouni]

"phone" with full keyboard.....           .......only beef with upcoming cosmo are it's dimensions..... ......But I guess I can live with that.

As Zharhan says, I also looking for Phone with Full Qwerty.

But for me, weight or dimensions of device is only good thing to have. I had few Sony experias (Z3 and XZ), both were thin like a hell. And when you keep device that thin, light and fragile on your pocket, you get dummy device with bended motherboard. So nice to hear about good and steady dimensions of upcoming Cosmo Communicator.

Few features at Sony were tremendous, Good camera with physical shutter button. Email with rush hour feature, so you can tell mobile device to sync OnDuty account only Mon-Fri, 0700-1600 etc. And there were battery saving modes (stamina and ultra stamina), when travelling at vacation when you can be "offline" I get few weeks of runtime by one single charge. But fragile dimension!

[Piece_Maker]

- Front-panel : will the front panel be usable by Sailfish ? Will the API be open-sourced ? Keep the firmware closed-source, I don't mind, but open the API, please. The PC team is small and must be focused on providing the best Android experience because I think only a few bearded barbarians (like me) will use it with Linux or Sailfish. When they stabilise the API, I'm from those willing to take a peek on it, and maybe work on top of it.

That is the idea. I am sure they are working with Jolla to get it working on the cosmo. They have mentioned that it will be usable from all platforms.

For what it's worth, I e-mailed Planet about this before throwing my money at them, and their response went:  

While I believe the device will support Linux and Sailfish, our primary focus is currently Android as that alone requires a lot of work to make it function with the external screen and it's dedicated chip. It is likely that the development of Sailfish on the Cosmo will be left to the Jolla team as it currently is.

 

Not overly promising to be honest, but as long as there's an open API to use I imagine there'll be someone who figures out how to make it happen. I'm hoping to use this as a primarily Sailfish device (With maybe a Debian dual boot), but I can live without the external screen for now

[Cyril]

- Front-panel : will the front panel be usable by Sailfish ? Will the API be open-sourced ? Keep the firmware closed-source, I don't mind, but open the API, please. The PC team is small and must be focused on providing the best Android experience because I think only a few bearded barbarians (like me) will use it with Linux or Sailfish. When they stabilise the API, I'm from those willing to take a peek on it, and maybe work on top of it.

That is the idea. I am sure they are working with Jolla to get it working on the cosmo. They have mentioned that it will be usable from all platforms.

For what it's worth, I e-mailed Planet about this before throwing my money at them, and their response went:  

While I believe the device will support Linux and Sailfish, our primary focus is currently Android as that alone requires a lot of work to make it function with the external screen and it's dedicated chip. It is likely that the development of Sailfish on the Cosmo will be left to the Jolla team as it currently is.

 

Not overly promising to be honest, but as long as there's an open API to use I imagine there'll be someone who figures out how to make it happen. I'm hoping to use this as a primarily Sailfish device (With maybe a Debian dual boot), but I can live without the external screen for now

Hello and welcome to the newcomers !

Thank you Piece_Maker for the information. At least, I find PC  honest in this answer, and logical given the size of their team. The open-source community will have to pick-up this interfacing on Sailfish and Linux. I'm beginning to browse the Sailfish/Jolla/Mer documentation to determine which component tap into so as to forward information to the front-panel.

From week 23 update : "[...] We have also been working on the software interface between the main MediaTek P70 processor and the second processor, the STM32: we have been defining the messages that will be passed from Android or Linux to the second processor and vice versa. Having a separate processor handling the external screen allows uniform interfacing of the second screen to any Operating System that is running on the main Cosmo processor, without needing to modify the second processor firmware. [...]"

I'm guessing a few things. If I'm referring to this PDF, the STM32 micro-controller will surely be managed as a USB device by the phone's operating system as surely they will not "reinvent the wheel"...

So, Sailfish OS applications using C++/Qt/QML, the communication itself could be managed with QSerialPort (I have to check if it's supported on Sailfish's Qt), and the back-end could maybe be shared with Linux. For now, and until reading the front-panel API document, it's only a guessing game :-) Maybe it's worth to open a dedicated thread ?

Cyril

[Vistaus]

It would be really nice if we could also run Ubuntu Touch on the Cosmo

[vader]

So, Sailfish OS applications using C++/Qt/QML, the communication itself could be managed with QSerialPort (I have to check if it's supported on Sailfish's Qt), and the back-end could maybe be shared with Linux. For now, and until reading the front-panel API document, it's only a guessing game :-) Maybe it's worth to open a dedicated thread ?

My thoughts as well. I might start looking around that area on my gemini to see what is possible. I will create a thread about it.

[Piece_Maker]

Thanks for the warm welcome Cyrill  

Chances are whatever Planet are using to interface with the outer screen with a 'regular' Linux install with work with Sailfish, unless it's specific to Xorg (as Sailfish uses Wayland and has no Xwayland support).  

I don't know for sure, but to me the external screen seems almost like a smartwatch in terms of functionality - it looks like it has its own interface, its own icons, its own way of displaying things (Rather than Android telling it how to display it, Android just pings it and says 'There's a new e-mail', and the screen pops up its own e-mail icon), which would make sense given what Planet have said about having its own processor and firmware and being accessible via API's. As such I'd imagine rudimentary support would be fairly quick to be implemented, as it'll mostly just be a case of firing the notification daemon at the screen's API. Maybe it'll need a second daemon similar to Rockpool (for Pebble watches) but if Jolla are serious about supporting the Cosmo they might bake it into their official image. Who knows!  

I think the interesting part will be making the 'selfie cam' functionality of the screen work. Planet showed in their videos someone using the Cosmo to take a selfie, with the lid shut and their face appearing on the outer screen, but then using the same camera with the lid open to take a normal photo. I can't imagine that'll be easy to get working in Sailfish, but again I'm sure someone will figure it out.

[drpeter]

Latest update from PC indicates that all Cosmos will have the original spec 'Space Grey' panels.  This is a slight disappointment to those who liked the look of the 'Prototype Metallic Blue' seen in recent updates.

Andrew over on the IndieGogo forum has apparently successfully pimped his Gemini with the type of durable vinyl adhesive wrap used on cars.

Anyone else had experience of this, or similar?

[Pikku-iikka]

Latest update from PC indicates that all Cosmos will have the original spec 'Space Grey' panels.  This is a slight disappointment to those who liked the look of the 'Prototype Metallic Blue' seen in recent updates.

Andrew over on the IndieGogo forum has apparently successfully pimped his Gemini with the type of durable vinyl adhesive wrap used on cars.

Anyone else had experience of this, or similar?

For me it is good news hearing of the panel color. Do not like the blue variant. But it is not that difficult to change the panel colours to what ever you prefer. You need either some painting experience (preferably from modelling) or could even do the job with vinyl adhesives. I think the job would be something like decorating a part of a car etc, which I have done a few times. Laying down letters etc. You do not have to buy a whole roll for the job, just take exact measures and order the actual sheets on-line. Best to look for a company that is reliable and uses class products (not the cheapest maybe). Sorry, can not help you with companies, because I live in a different part of the world, but even in this distant and quiet environment there are several entrepreneurs offering their help.

Before measuring, I would be waiting the Cosmo of course to be sure if class A decorating would need separating some parts of it...

[drpeter]

Latest update from PC indicates that all Cosmos will have the original spec 'Space Grey' panels.  This is a slight disappointment to those who liked the look of the 'Prototype Metallic Blue' seen in recent updates.

Andrew over on the IndieGogo forum has apparently successfully pimped his Gemini with the type of durable vinyl adhesive wrap used on cars.

Anyone else had experience of this, or similar?

For me it is good news hearing of the panel color. Do not like the blue variant. But it is not that difficult to change the panel colours to what ever you prefer. You need either some painting experience (preferably from modelling) or could even do the job with vinyl adhesives. I think the job would be something like decorating a part of a car etc, which I have done a few times. Laying down letters etc. You do not have to buy a whole roll for the job, just take exact measures and order the actual sheets on-line. Best to look for a company that is reliable and uses class products (not the cheapest maybe). Sorry, can not help you with companies, because I live in a different part of the world, but even in this distant and quiet environment there are several entrepreneurs offering their help.

Before measuring, I would be waiting the Cosmo of course to be sure if class A decorating would need separating some parts of it...

Thanks. I'll definitely be taking a good look at the actual grey finish close-up before even thinking about doing anything different.  I suspect I'll end up keeping it as-is.  I doubt any kind of paint would stand up to the friction and humidity of regular pocket wear, hence my vague interest in the possible vinyl solution...