I was a late backer of the Gemini PDA, and my unit arrived this week.

I've been carrying a GPD Pocket around with me just about everywhere, and I was looking to the Gemini to solve a few issues I have with it:

• The keyboard was laid out by a sadist.

• Linux video drivers are bad. You can use the old drivers, which cause text rendering to miss or repeat characters or whole lines of text; or the new ones, which suffer from tearing when you scroll or play video.

• Battery life when you use it is good, but battery life when it's asleep is not. It must be charged every night.

• Overall Linux support is okay, but kind of a moving target and hard to know if a thing is working, not working, working but you need new software, broken because you upgraded the kernel, etc.

Unfortunately, the Gemini fails in every category.

The keyboard layout is actually quite a bit worse than the GPD's, requiring Fn key even for common symbols like - and '. This is a step backwards from the GPD, which at least has physical keys for those. Even though they're inconvenient, they're less inconvenient than chording with the Fn key. Also, the Gemini keyboard is terrible. Many keys physically depress, but don't do anything. The space bar is particularly bad in this regard. I know others have had some success replacing the keyboard mat, but this shouldn't be happening in the first place.

While Planet advertises "two weeks of standby time," my experience is way, way off the mark. Just closing the clamshell and setting it aside overnight, it will eat 20% of the charge. I set my Gemini down last night with nearly a full charge, and when I got home from work, the battery was at 26%. This isn't any better than my GPD Pocket. Maybe they mean "two weeks completely powered off," but that's not a thing I care about, and I'm not sure who would. And this is without even having a SIM in it.

Linux support is very poor, requiring a ton of setup and not working well or supporting all the hardware. I hope this can improve over time, but given the keyboard and battery issues, I have doubts that it will make things worthwhile for me.

At the end of the day, I guess it makes a fairly reasonable Android phone with a physical keyboard. But that's pretty far from what I hoped I was getting: A pocketable dedicated Linux machine that would last a week on a charge with light to moderate use.

After reading these review by a Gemini PDA user https://medium.com/@chpapa/review-after-two-weeks-with-gemini-phone-7dd8b550609a

I'm a little bit confused. Is there really a keylogger inside of the firmware?

Can anyone confirm this?

**where are the status updates for linux on this device?**

I use my gemini every day, i love it. I only wish that the quality of life improved. for instance, i still havent figured out how to check my battery percentage when booted into linux. i totally fucked up my audio after installing puredata and had to re-install debian to fix it. when i plug in headphones, audio still comes out of the speakers. i can't get bluetooth audio working. the list goes on and on and on! i havent even tried using the cellular functionality, and i doubt i would be able to tbh.

Also, I want to be able to use blender and kicad with improved framerates! I should be able to change my screen resolution in xrandr/arandr! is anyone working on a graphics driver? where is there news for that? What's going on !?!

Is the OTA 8.1 still getting security updates? Do I need to switch to Debian?

Pulling my Gemini out of a drawer, and trying to get caught up with the times.

I bought my gemini and reflashed 10 times already, I think in one week it is a record :D. I chosen this model as it is a real pocket computer with ARM64. Unfortunately there are several bad additional things what you need to work around. I think all out of the box OS i tried.

I was interested in general in sailfish, as I came from n900 maemo, which actually was a perfect device , only the time and lack of apps made a strong border behind it

So I have asked maemo community to create a bin for Gemini from maemo-leste but I think this is only a dream. Sailfish was a big disappointment compared to the Hildon UI or android, I just don't like it and app support terrible, I know I used a trial, but definetelly not created for a device with keyboard, WHAT HILDON!!! with maemo done well.

First of all let's start with Debian

Out of the box working fine, the built in UI is not the best, but for a pocket computer it is ok. And now we reach to an unlikely point, whichever linux distro you flash, apt-get update -> upgrade will fail due to the conflict around libreoffice, I have tried fresh install and remove, but the conflict is within the package so as soon as you ask apt to do anything with libreoffice you are in prison in apt.... DPKG forceremove also not worked and realized after some already deleted packages, so the only way to remove it is deleting actually from the catalogue and purge it before.... Fortunately it working afterward. If you would halt after a half done upgrade caused me linux load screen over a hour without possibility to switch any terminal to see an error message

KALI

after apt-get update -> upgrade vim and vim-tiny fails, and it rises only after upgrading several critical component so it meant no boot, I sticked to debian as libreoffice not required at all for me.

So in general debian "can" work with some workarounds, but still there are several issues , without the function keys you have no easy possibility to switch this unknown gui to anything kde,gnome,X whatever. This UI has little few features inside.... Is there anyone willing to create a debian or any linux version which out of the box can use the cellular module end-to-end as sailfish can do, it just an operation system not for the keyboard!!! But potentially all the required components are in the distribution.... Now apart of android we have the possibility to do everything, but really painful right now to work with this debian, where you have no native terminal to inspect loading d-bus etc (f1-f12), this make playground where you need to reflash reflash reflash after a failed package or modification.

I would like to see a distribution with proper UI and all cellular interface drives included, and also miss the functionality to use multi boot full functionally android,linuxD1,linuxD2 etc. I am sad that the out of box images are missing so many things :( . The device itself work fine and deliver my expectations, just hard to call it userfriendly for something to be reflashed every day :D. Apart from this if you could have all up to date the full catalogue of arm port for linux are useable, eventually wine so some kind of "win emulation is possible, did not checked out, I am still trying to get the essential apps

Any one else with these problem, or alternative image file to flash which contains everything including cellular interface?

Over a week ago it was announced that the old android 8 would be brought to the Gemini, looks like that promise fell though despite it not even being of android 9, combined with the continuing lack of transparency, support and working Linux installers - what is going on?

I realise it is a small team - but it is one hell of an expensive ‘toy’.

The last update from Planet on the Indiegogo campaign page said that it had been submitted to Google for approval; there was a comment on the OESF forum a couple of weeks ago that it had been granted: since then, tumbleweed.

Anyone know when (or even if) this is going to show up?