![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I like cheap Chinese phones. I am on my 3rd now: first an iRulu Victory v3, which came with 5.1. First 6.5" phablet I ever saw: plasticky, not very hi-res, but well under €200 and had dual SIMs, a µSD slot and a replaceable battery. No compass though.
Then a PPTV King 7, amazing device for the time, which came with 5 as well but half in Chinese. I rooted it and put CyanogenMod on it, getting me Android 6. Retina screen, dual SIM or 1 + µSD, fast, amazing screen.
Now, an Umidigi F2, which came with Android 10. Astonishing spec for about €125. Dual SIM + µSD, 128GB flash, fast, superb screen.
But with all of them, typically, you get 1 ROM update ever, normally the first time you turn it on, then that's it. The PPTV was a slight exception as a 3rd party ROM got me a newer version, but with penalties: the camera autofocus failed and all images were blue-tinged, the mic mostly stopped working, and the compass became a random-number generator.
They are all great for the money, but the chipset will never get a newer Android. This is normal. It's the price of getting a £150 phone with the specification of a £600+ phone.
In contrast, I bought my G/F a Xiaomi A2. It's great for the money – a £200 phone – but it wasn't high-end when new. But the build quality is good, the OS has little bloatware (because Android One), at 3YO the battery still lasts a day, there are no watermarks on photos etc.
It had 3 major versions of Android (7, then 8, then 9) and then some updates on top.
This is what you get with Android One and a big-name Chinese vendor.
Me, I go for the amazing deals from little-known vendors, and I accept that I'll never get an update.
MediaTek are not one of those companies that maintain their version for years. In return, they're cheap and the spec is good when they're new. They just move on to new products. Planet persuaded 'em to put 8 on it, and they deserve kudos for that, not complaining. It's an obsolete product; there's no reason to buy a Gemini when you could have a Cosmo, other than cost.
No, these are not £150 phones. They're £500 phones, because of the unique form-factor: a clamshell with the best mobile keyboard ever made.
But Planet Computers are a small company making an almost-bespoke device: i.e. in tiny numbers by modern standards. So, yes, it's made from cheap parts from the cheapest possible manufacturers, because the production run is thousands. A Chinese phone maker like Xiaomi would consider a production run of only 20 million units to be a failure. (Source: interview with former CEO.) 80 million is a niche product to them.
PlanetComp production is below prototype scale for these guys. It's basically a weird little niche hand-made item.
For that, £500 is very good. Compare with the F(x)tech Pro-1, still not shipping a good 18 months after I personally enquired about one, which is about £750 – for a poorer keyboard and a device with fewer adaptations to landscape use.
This is what you get when one vendor -- Google -- provides the OS, another does the port, another builds products around it, and often, another sells the things. Mediatek design and build the SoC, and port one specific version of Android to it... a bit of work from the integrator and OEM builder, and there's your product.
This is one of the things you sometimes get if you buy a name-brand phone: OS updates. But the Chinese phones I favour are ½-⅓ of the price of a cheap name-brand Android and ¼ of the price of a premium brand such as Samsung. So I can replace the phone 2-3× more often and keep more current that way... and still be a lot less worried about having it stolen, or breaking it, or the like. Win/win, for my perspective.
Part of this is because the ARM world is not like the PC world.
For a start, in the x86 world, you can rely on their being system firmware to boot your OS. Most PCs used to use a BIOS; the One Laptop Per Child XO-1 used Open Firmware, like NewWorld PowerMacs. Now, we all get UEFI.
(I do not like UEFI much, as regular readers, if I have a plural number of those, may have gathered.)
ARM systems have no standard firmware. No bootloader, nothing at all. The system vendor has to do all that stuff themselves. And with a SoC (System On A Chip), the system vendor is the chip designer/fabricator.
(For instance, the Raspberry Pi's ARM cores are actually under the control of the GPU which runs its own OS -- a proprietary RTOS called ThreadX. When a RasPi boots, the *GPU* loads the "firmware" from SD card, which boots ThreadX, and then ThreadX starts the ARM core(s) and loads an OS into them. That's why there must be the special little FAT partition: that is what ThreadX reads. That's also why RasPis do not use GRUB or any other bootloader. The word "booting" is a reference to Baron Münchausen lifting himself out of a swamp by his own bootstraps. The computer loads its own software, a contradiction in terms: it lifts itself into running condition by its own bootstraps. I.e. it boots up.
Well, RasPis don't. The GPU boots, loads ThreadX, and then ThreadX initialises the ARMs and puts an OS into their memory for them and tells them to run it.)
So each and every ARM system (i.e. device built around a particular SoC, unless it's very weird) has to have a new native port of every OS. You can't boot a one phone off the Android from another.
A Gemini is a cheapish very-low-production-run Chinese Android phone, with an additional keyboard wired on, and the screen forced to landscape mode in software. (A real landscape screen would have cost too much.)
Cosmo piggybacks a separate little computer in the lid, much like the "touchbar" on a MacBook Pro is a separate little ARM computer running its own OS, like a tiny, very long thin iPad.
AstroSlide will do away with this again, so the fancy hinge should make for a simpler, less expensive design... Note, I say should...
Then a PPTV King 7, amazing device for the time, which came with 5 as well but half in Chinese. I rooted it and put CyanogenMod on it, getting me Android 6. Retina screen, dual SIM or 1 + µSD, fast, amazing screen.
Now, an Umidigi F2, which came with Android 10. Astonishing spec for about €125. Dual SIM + µSD, 128GB flash, fast, superb screen.
But with all of them, typically, you get 1 ROM update ever, normally the first time you turn it on, then that's it. The PPTV was a slight exception as a 3rd party ROM got me a newer version, but with penalties: the camera autofocus failed and all images were blue-tinged, the mic mostly stopped working, and the compass became a random-number generator.
They are all great for the money, but the chipset will never get a newer Android. This is normal. It's the price of getting a £150 phone with the specification of a £600+ phone.
In contrast, I bought my G/F a Xiaomi A2. It's great for the money – a £200 phone – but it wasn't high-end when new. But the build quality is good, the OS has little bloatware (because Android One), at 3YO the battery still lasts a day, there are no watermarks on photos etc.
It had 3 major versions of Android (7, then 8, then 9) and then some updates on top.
This is what you get with Android One and a big-name Chinese vendor.
Me, I go for the amazing deals from little-known vendors, and I accept that I'll never get an update.
MediaTek are not one of those companies that maintain their version for years. In return, they're cheap and the spec is good when they're new. They just move on to new products. Planet persuaded 'em to put 8 on it, and they deserve kudos for that, not complaining. It's an obsolete product; there's no reason to buy a Gemini when you could have a Cosmo, other than cost.
No, these are not £150 phones. They're £500 phones, because of the unique form-factor: a clamshell with the best mobile keyboard ever made.
But Planet Computers are a small company making an almost-bespoke device: i.e. in tiny numbers by modern standards. So, yes, it's made from cheap parts from the cheapest possible manufacturers, because the production run is thousands. A Chinese phone maker like Xiaomi would consider a production run of only 20 million units to be a failure. (Source: interview with former CEO.) 80 million is a niche product to them.
PlanetComp production is below prototype scale for these guys. It's basically a weird little niche hand-made item.
For that, £500 is very good. Compare with the F(x)tech Pro-1, still not shipping a good 18 months after I personally enquired about one, which is about £750 – for a poorer keyboard and a device with fewer adaptations to landscape use.
This is what you get when one vendor -- Google -- provides the OS, another does the port, another builds products around it, and often, another sells the things. Mediatek design and build the SoC, and port one specific version of Android to it... a bit of work from the integrator and OEM builder, and there's your product.
This is one of the things you sometimes get if you buy a name-brand phone: OS updates. But the Chinese phones I favour are ½-⅓ of the price of a cheap name-brand Android and ¼ of the price of a premium brand such as Samsung. So I can replace the phone 2-3× more often and keep more current that way... and still be a lot less worried about having it stolen, or breaking it, or the like. Win/win, for my perspective.
Part of this is because the ARM world is not like the PC world.
For a start, in the x86 world, you can rely on their being system firmware to boot your OS. Most PCs used to use a BIOS; the One Laptop Per Child XO-1 used Open Firmware, like NewWorld PowerMacs. Now, we all get UEFI.
(I do not like UEFI much, as regular readers, if I have a plural number of those, may have gathered.)
ARM systems have no standard firmware. No bootloader, nothing at all. The system vendor has to do all that stuff themselves. And with a SoC (System On A Chip), the system vendor is the chip designer/fabricator.
(For instance, the Raspberry Pi's ARM cores are actually under the control of the GPU which runs its own OS -- a proprietary RTOS called ThreadX. When a RasPi boots, the *GPU* loads the "firmware" from SD card, which boots ThreadX, and then ThreadX starts the ARM core(s) and loads an OS into them. That's why there must be the special little FAT partition: that is what ThreadX reads. That's also why RasPis do not use GRUB or any other bootloader. The word "booting" is a reference to Baron Münchausen lifting himself out of a swamp by his own bootstraps. The computer loads its own software, a contradiction in terms: it lifts itself into running condition by its own bootstraps. I.e. it boots up.
Well, RasPis don't. The GPU boots, loads ThreadX, and then ThreadX initialises the ARMs and puts an OS into their memory for them and tells them to run it.)
So each and every ARM system (i.e. device built around a particular SoC, unless it's very weird) has to have a new native port of every OS. You can't boot a one phone off the Android from another.
A Gemini is a cheapish very-low-production-run Chinese Android phone, with an additional keyboard wired on, and the screen forced to landscape mode in software. (A real landscape screen would have cost too much.)
Cosmo piggybacks a separate little computer in the lid, much like the "touchbar" on a MacBook Pro is a separate little ARM computer running its own OS, like a tiny, very long thin iPad.
AstroSlide will do away with this again, so the fancy hinge should make for a simpler, less expensive design... Note, I say should...
