Overview

Welcome to Planet Computers’ third project: Astro Slide.

Astro Slide is the first 5G smartphone with a keyboard and is the fastest 5G device announced to date.  Astro’s revolutionary RockUp™ slider hinge transforms the powerful 6.39″ touchscreen smartphone into a mini laptop, featuring Planet’s signature tactile backlit keyboard.

Astro Slide Is great for emails, messaging, editing documents, making calls and taking snaps. Astro’s 5G communications offer fastest upload and download speeds for true productivity on the go.  Astro Slide runs Android 11 OS with a multi-boot option for supporting Linux.  Perfect as your daily driver!
 

Quick Facts

• First 5G handheld device with full physical keyboard
• RockUp™ slider hinge mechanism combines all the power of a mini laptop  with the functionality of a smartphone
• Device features a large AMOLED 6.39″ touchscreen display and a 48MP camera
• Astro runs Android 11 and also supports Linux OSs, with a multi-boot option
• Big enough to be the only device you need to carry, and small enough to fit in your pocket, it’s a true all-in-one replacement for both your mobile phone and your laptop
   

Media Coverage

The Planet story enters a new era…

At Planet Computers, we never stop innovating. Over the past two years, we have delivered our award-winning Gemini PDA and Cosmo Communicator devices to over ten thousand backers, who supported our mission to kickstart a new mobile computing revolution.

The revolution continues as we embrace the latest mobile technologies and trends, coupled with our passion for typing, writing, creating on the go.

We are extending the range of Planet devices with the brand new Astro Slide, our flagship 5G transformer smartphone.Once again, we have listened to our backers, who wanted more power, a large touchscreen always accessible, but also want to easy access to Planet’s signature backlit keyboard – without compromise.

We are fully embracing the power of 5G, and we decided to go “all in” to provide the ultimate 5G keyboard experience on the Astro. To have a smartphone that can transform into a pocket computer with simple thumb action is truly a leap in usability and functionality – great for both work and play.

It’s the ultimate in mobile design, power and usability.

Astro Slide is the first of Planet’s transformer smartphones with a large 6.39” touchscreen display.  Featuring Planet’s revolutionary patented RockUp slider hinge, Astro Slide reveals Planet’s signature keyboard at the push of thumb.

The display gently tilts up to the optimal viewing angle transforming Astro into a powerful pocket computer.

Astro Slide gives you the freedom to write, create, animate, communicate and be entertained in one familiar form factor.

Astro Slide is the first 5G phone device with a keyboard to be announced to date. Powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 800 chipset with 8 super-fast cores plus advanced GPU and APU processors, it offers twice the performance of other 5G chipsets with significantly reduced power consumption, achieving download speeds of up to 2.39 Gb/s.

Astro Slide’s battery will power a user through an entire day of work and play.

Astro Slide also features Wi-Fi , Bluetooth 5,1 and NFC communications and wireless charging. Astro has a 48-megapixel rear facing Sony-sensor camera as well as a front camera for video calling.

A revolution in design

The Astro Slide and its RockUp™ hinge slider mechanism have been designed by Martin Riddiford.

Martin is the inventor of the clamshell mobile device and the designer behind all the Psion and Planet devices to date.

Astro Slide has a truly revolutionary design, offering the convenience of a smartphone, as well as laptop keyboard productivity – beautifully crafted in one device – all of it in the palm of your hand. It’s a no compromise solution and perfect as your daily driver.

Planet’s signature backlit keyboard allows you to comfortably work at night or in dark spaces such as on long plane journeys without the need of external lighting.

Key features

We’ve designed the Astro Slide to have all the features you need:

• A newly-designed integrated physical backlit keyboard
• A large 6.39″ AMOLED touchscreen display with Gorilla glass
• A hi-res 48MP rear camera
• 8GB of RAM and 128GB of Flash storage
• Fingerprint sensor and smart toggle button for security and control
• NFC for payment

Other features of Astro Slide include:

• Fingerprint sensor
• 2x Nano SIMs and 1x eSIM 
• 8GB RAM and 128GB of internal memory
• a MicroSD slot for additional storage
• 2 USB-C ports and an audio jack

Technical Specification

Below is the full Astro Slide technical specification.

Software

Astro is designed to run the latest Android 10 OS and all you favourite apps, as well as Linux-based operating systems with a multi-boot option.

You can easily run Microsoft Office for Android apps , such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook , as well as Planet’s own PDA software suite including the Agenda calendaring app, Notes app for notetaking and dictation, the Data database app and our email client, Airmail.

What We Need & What You Get

We are proud of what we have created to date but need your support to push it over the line. By supporting us, you will be part of inventing the transformer smartphone product category, which we feel is so lacking in the market at present. We would love you to join us on our journey to bring the product to life.

We aim to raise $200,000 through our crowd funding campaign. Funds raised will go directly to funding the final design phases, manufacturing of the units ordered through the crowd fund, and development of the Android 10 and Linux boot firmware. 

As early backers, we were keen to reward you with some unique perks. All Astro units claimed as perks will have at least $350 off the planned retail price. First deliveries now start in March 2021 to Astro backers.

Impact

With email and messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Skype, LinkedIn and Facebook Messenger, there is a lot of typing required – and having a quality mobile keyboard is a must.  It’s no longer just about swiping  or typing on a keyboard, making calls , taking photos or voice control – its about all of these actions!  And we need to be able to make these actions wherever and whenever we want.

In creating Astro Slide, we tried to incorporate many features that will make this device powerful enough to be the only device that you need to carry around with you.

Astro Slide allows you to work in restricted spaces comfortably, on planes on trains, in coffee bars. You can also hold the Astro and use it with ease as a passenger  in the car, standing up or on the bus.

It’s the only device you need to carry – and small enough to fit in your pocket.

It’s a true all-in-one replacement for both your smartphone and your laptop.

Perfect as your daily driver!

Risks & Challenges

The team behind this campaign and Planet Computers has been involved in successfully delivering 8 funded crowdfunding campaigns. We have expertise in bringing both consumer electronics, hardware and software to market.

At present, we have an initial prototype of the Astro Slide that we built with our industrial design partners Therefore in the UK. We will be working with our factory in China and our designers in the UK to finalise mechanical engineering, PCB and radio electronics for the Astro. Having delivered both the Gemini PDA and Cosmo Communicator devices in less than a year we are proud of those achievement, but building any new product is a huge task and is a risky journey. Our team has experience of delivering both software and hardware. Our aim is to have the product available for shipping to the first backers of our campaign in March 2021. We have given this project an extra 2 month to deliver as it is our first 5G device. We know this is an ambitious target but one which we truly believe is achievable with our team in place. As such, we will be providing our backers with regular updates on Astro’s progress.

Our supply chain and factories are already back up and running after the recent shutdown in China, producing more Cosmo Communicators for more recent Cosmo backers and our distributors worldwide. We are of course continuing production and support for Gemini PDA and Cosmo Communicator devices.

Stretch Goal

We have introduced a stretch goal to our campaign for the first time.

If we get to €1,000,000 before the end of the campaign, on 9th May, we will create an exclusive Planet Backup system for Astro.  We know many of you don’t like to share your precious data with third parties, so if we reach this milestone you can be assured of a solution exclusive to Planet Computers’ users and be guaranteed that you can back up and restore your data without using a third party cloud solution.  You will be able to back up to an SD card or USB memory stick and we are hoping to offer further options in the future.  The back up will support backing up your Android apps with your data, phone settings and local files.

You can back the Planet Backup Contribution perk to help us reach the stretch goal.

Other Ways You Can Help

We would love you to join the Planet Computers’ movement. We have set out a wide variety of ways for you, as backer, to help us. Any support, however great or small, is kindly received. As any startup, we will have our hands full trying to get this product to market, and we are super excited about it. 

Helping spread the word on social media or telling colleagues or friends about our campaign would be like having fairy dust sprinkled on us! If you have any suggestions of ways you think you can help, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us by email (hello@planetcom.co.uk) or social media. We would love to hear from you. 

We are also running a referral competition for Astro backers. The top 3 Astro Slide campaign referrers by contributions will be rewarded with prizes as follows: 

We hope that you like the prizes and that you will spread the message. The winning referrer prizes will be sent out after the Astro Slide campaign ends in the first week of June 2020. We will contact the referrers for their choice of keyboard layouts. 

We hope that you like our new device and that you can help us make it a reality.

Stay safe and please support us on Indiegogo!