Pictures of the Astro

[Daniel W]

Today marks the beginning of my Christmas leave, so now I can finally turn my Astro, that came a week ago, on and begin moving in, but not until I have uploaded a bunch of photos, as I promised in the "Estimation of Astro shipment" thread.

In photography, I am not a professional and neither is my equipment. My quality target is "fit for purpose", with the intention of offering a decently detailed look at the Astro box and its contents. I declare all photos I upload to this thread as CC0 Public Domain to the extent possible by applicable law. While I hope there will be much better free images of the Astro made available by others, this is my attempt to make sure there is at least one set of free photos of the thing. Let me know if you think I have missed some relevant angle and I am likely to try honouring what I deem to be reasonable requests. Now, pictures:

I have tried to tastefully obfuscate maybe sensitive codes, while preserving their visual feeling. This the outer box, as it came and then open:

The inner box from the top, front, rear, bottom and side:

 

 

 

 

The inner box, with the first flap, held closed by magnets, open:

Both flaps open, Astro visible:

Here she is, wrapped in plastic:

The next layer in the box has a SIM tray tool on the outside:

Inside the thing the tool sat on, is a quick guide, a sheet of stickers and a really thin microfibre cloth:

A close up of the quick guide. It is really basic, like "this is on", "talk here". You get the picture:

The next layer in the box holds the charger and its cable:

Here's the Astro (left) and the Cosmo (right) chargers. The Astro charger is a tad more powerful, per its markings.

With the box now empty, here's the Astro, front and rear, with my hand for scale, and getting the angle right:

[Daniel W]

Here are some angled shots of the closed device:

 

 

 

 

Angled frontal view of the Astro opened:

 

A rear angled photo, showing the Rock Up slider extended:

The location of the SIM tray, and the tray itself, front and rear:

 

 

Astro (left) and Cosmo (right):

All three; Gemini, Cosmo and Astro:

While, in the following, I could have tweaked the perspective to whatever, I have tried to reproduce what I saw with my own eyes. Here's a side view to compare the thickness of a Gemini (left), an Astro (center) and a Cosmo (right)

Individual devices, now with a ruler in view. My readings are 15, 17 and 19mm respectively:

 

 

Put another way, a Cosmo in its Planet slipcase is about as thick as a bare Astro:

While it won't affect me anyway, I notice the Astro keyboard, top to bottom, is 2mm narrower:

 

That's all for now, and I need to sleep now, badly.

[gymbo]

Thanks for the photos!

One quick question: Does the Astro fit in the case for the Cosmo? My intention was to use it for the Astro, but if it not possible to get it to fit, I need to start looking at other options... (Although I probably wont be getting my Astro for quite some time yet...)

[Daniel W]

With my Astro inserted, my Cosmo slip case looks like this:

I think it's a bit too tight for comfort. As the case is sewn from four sections of leather, with the top and bottom being rather rigid, it seems to be the elasticity of the two narrow side sections that limits its ability to accommodate thicker devices than it was designed for. Maybe that leather could stretch from the 17mm of the Cosmo to the 19mm of the Astro, but if so, that could take weeks or months.

The Gemini slipcase, on the other hand, is made from only two sections of fairly pliable leather. With my Astro inserted, it looks like this:

This seems like an easier fit to me, and while you won't see any of it, the display will be a bit better protected.

[gymbo]

Thanks a lot Daniel! It seems I've actually got some options then. I have the "case" for the Gemini as well, but never actually used it, at it was a bit to tight, and the Gemini didn't have an outside screen, so the need for protection wasn't as big. But it fits the Astro?!

Some of my reasoning behind using the case for the Cosmo was that I would at least get access to SOME of the screen, but now I will at least have two options, without having to get/buy/make something new.

[Daniel W]

I don't think a never used Gemini case would fit an Astro right away.

As leather stretches a bit with use, the Gemini case was - correctly, in my opinion - made to be quite snug at first, as you noticed. After several months, mine loosened up to where my Gemini would fall out, if I held it wrong. Currently it fits my Cosmo nicely and my Astro a bit tightly. Being made entirely from rather thin, supple leather, I think it might adapt even to the Astro, if I kept using it for that, which I don't think I will.

If you'd go that route, I suppose you'd have to slowly stretch the Gemini case over time. If you have it, keep your Gemini in it, and take it out a few times a day. After a while, see if your Cosmo fits reasonably. Then, maybe, you could start thinking about the Astro, you hopefully have by then.

The Cosmo case is made from two kinds of leather, where only the thin strip joining the front to the back seems (to me) able to stretch, so I'm less sure that would adapt well to a thicker device.

I backed the "New Astro Accessories Pack", so at some point I suppose I'll get a slightly larger Gemini style pouch and one of those see-through backside-only plastic covers to experiment with. Until such I time I consider to have my Astro bare and be careful, but we'll see what I end up doing.

[Daniel W]

I am posting to this old thread to keep these together with my previous Astro photos. Since the screen of my Astro didn't turn on again after the V07 Android update, I've been looking for things to try. Today, I carefully took a guitar pick and some patience to the rear cover to see if I could briefly unplug the battery to completely power cycle the motherboard (running down the battery until the Astro turned off didn't help). What I found looked a bit too scary to begin disassembling nilly-willy, so I just took a quick pictures and snapped the cover back on. Getting it to completely snap back into place was about as hard as getting it off in the first place. It seems it would be easy to break some little piece of plastic. Anyway, here's my pictures: