Astro Slide 5G Transformer smartphone comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard

31 March 2020
The project is on Indiegogo and surpassed 260% of its goal for crowdfunding.

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Wow now something with a mediatek d1000 is a midranger. If thats what the writer thinks he should call everything with the kirin 990 midrange too, since its a worse chipset.

    • R
    • RC255
    • 0Fb
    • 31 Mar 2020

    This writer seems to think 6gb ram and what has proven to be a good soc can only write emails. The D1000 has proven to be a very capable chipset and with 6gb ram can handle anything you throw at it. And given the target audience and the tech required the price seems very fair to me and think this is great news for people who still want a hardware keyboard - there are still many - and see flagship specs and 5 cameras as unnecessary.

      • T
      • TheArtist
      • YQS
      • 31 Mar 2020

      I love the combination of big screens with potrait and landscape QWERTY keyboard. I have had the BlackBerry Priv, a beautiful smartphone with nice 5.4 inches 16:9 ratio curved display and a slide out potrait QWERTY keyboard and it was still very compact design compared to tall phones that we have these days. I would definitely like to own a modern smartphone with QWERTY keyboard if done the right way. Phones with QWERTY keyboard are more practical than dual screen phones or folding phones in my opinion and I hope more manufacturers bring out phones with slide out keyboards.

        • N
        • NL
        • U}}
        • 31 Mar 2020

        This looks a lot like my old nokia E90.
        Just shut up and take my money already.

        Oh wait, “just” €490? I changed my mind.
        Too damn expensive.

          • B
          • Bern.Dav
          • uCh
          • 31 Mar 2020

          All hail the mighty Nokia N95

            • s
            • sadh
            • tDF
            • 31 Mar 2020

            Nokia has resources, ideas, patents, loyalty, market, innovation and many more. Yet they just come up with boring candybar and huge chin bezel.

            Lumia 920 had so much back in time. And now, we event dont get OIS, stereo speaker in Nokia 8.3

            Such a shame

            And this comes from long-time Nokia Fan.

              • ?
              • Anonymous
              • 7wm
              • 31 Mar 2020

              Why planet computers does not sell globally like Samsung, apple and xiaomi did sell in India?

                the PKB looks comfy, though.
                would be nice to have it AFW-recommended, since BBDroid seems to be leaving the market.

                  This is something I think Moto and LG should do, inatead of that clumsy, useless Dual Screen gimmick workaround for countering onslaught by the likes of Fold - as well as all the gaming phones out there. Heck make it detachable, or not; put the keyboard on one side and gamepad controls on the other. That'll make it one hell of an accessory.

                  Coming back to this, 2 USB ports and Linux support is great, marvelous. But with that damn mediatek ticking inside, I'm worried about the quintessential persistent question of source codes' availability.

                  If full sources aren't available, then the point of this hacker friendly phone kind of becomes moot.

                    This phone is reminiscent of the Psion 5mx from the late 1990s. The photo shown above of the Astro Slide 5G is surprisingly an almost doppelganger of the Psion Series 5 PDA.

                      • ?
                      • Anonymous
                      • PZa
                      • 31 Mar 2020

                      It's a small notebook rather than a big phone.

                        There is no way in hell anyone who's used a smartphones for years would be able to type quicker on a physical keyboard in landscape mode than a virtual one in portrait mode. The keys would be too far apart because phones have gone way past the length from previous generations of full-qwerty keyboard phones (which were much shorter).

                          • G
                          • Guest
                          • Mmk
                          • 31 Mar 2020

                          This phone is great. Finally somebody understanding the business user. We don't need 6 cameras. With one is enough to make photos of docs. We need keyboard for fast writing and the idea of full Linux on board is great. We can use it as a computer. The 2 USBs is amazing too, I only hope one is for screen.

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