Cosmo Communicator

Is the Linux-compatible Cosmo Communicator PDA out of this world? Christian Cawley boldly launches a five-day mission to find out.

- Christian Cawley

SPECS

OS: Android 9.0, Debian, Sailfish

Display: 5.99inch 18:9, 2,160x1,080, 403dpi (main), 1.91-inch touch OLED (front)

CPU: MediaTek Helio P70 quad core

GPU: Mali-G72 MP3, 900MHz

RAM: 6GB

SSD: 128GB

Storage: microSD, eSIM, 2x nano SIM

USB: 2x USB C

Comms: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, NFC, Dual 4G, VoLTE, ViLTE, LTE

Camera: 5MP (front); 24MP (rear)

Battery: 4,220mAh

Size: 171.4x 79.3x 17.3mm

Somewhere at the back of a drawer in this writer’s house is an MDA Vario, also sold as the HTC Wizard. A mobile phone with a slide-out keyboard, this was an old idea when it came out in 2005, taking inspiration from the 1997 Psion Series 5 (mine’s in the attic–ED). Sadly, the MDA Vario promised much but, hampered by smaller dimensions and one of Microsoft’s various stutters in the mobile sphere, sadly failed to fulfil expectations.

We kept hold of the Vario partly on the off-chance we could find a Linux distro that works (or a kernel that compiles), and partly because we liked the idea of a phone with a physical keyboard that’s too small to use.

Which brings us neatly back to the Psion Series 5, which lives on in spirit (if not in actuality) at Planet Computers, where a group of ex-Psion engineers developed the Gemini (reviewed in LXF240) and now the Cosmo Communicator.

Keyboard evolution