Cosmo Communicator Review: Nostalgia over Functionality?

If you think a physical qwerty keyboard on a smartphone is a thing of the past, then you might want to think again, or maybe you’re right, time will tell. This! The Cosmo Communicator is Planet Computers, a London-based tech company’s second stab at keeping the PDA/Physical Keyboard dreams alive. If anyone remembers the 1997 Psion Series 5, this will bring back a lot of memories.

Designwise, it’s bulky, but it’s to be expected as it has a clamshell form factor which when opened reveals a keyboard and a big display. It’s already clear that this is aimed at the workforce, and probably not something you and I would enquire about or seek out to buy and use daily. This is something that I’d get my employees so that they can leave their bulky laptops in the office. It’s not a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 in looks and it’s not as older-looking as the Psion Series 5, but it still somewhat looks outdated.

There seems to be a mix of metal and hard plastic but whatever it is, it feels super solid, if you drop it, it might do more damage to the victim than the communicator itself. On the lid, there’s a fingerprint sensor integrated into a button for navigating the front display, a 24MP camera with flash, and a 1.91-inch AMOLED touch screen. Under the button is also an LED indicator light for when it’s on a charge. Up top or to the right is a power button, a USB C Port for attaching external peripherals or attachments, and to the left or the bottom is another USB C port for charging the Cosmo communicator and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. It also has a stereo speaker that’s really loud so if you were showing a video to a client on the move, you can do that for sure.

The front screen is tiny and you won’t be getting much work done anytime soon on there, but it’s useful for quickly glancing at messages, for example, that way you can determine whether it’s worth opening up your communicator to communicate. You can use the button to turn the front camera on, torch, or even adjust the settings too.

Opening the clamshell has a nice spring to it, and it springs open quickly and has satisfying feedback when you close it. The Cosmo Communicator is mainly designed to be used landscape like a mini laptop, but you can download an app to force it into portrait mode too. That way you can actually view Instagram stories properly since it’s running Android 9 OS after all. You have a 5.9-inch 2,160-by-1,080-pixel, 18:9 display with 403PPI that’s more than enough in terms of brightness and using it for work, browsing, and watching videos. The keyboard is backlit, with individually illuminated keys with 5 brightness levels.

As well as the Android 9 OS, you get 128GB storage + 6GB RAM. In this day and age, 6GB RAM is not a lot and 128GB is not a lot either, but again keep in mind, this would be a device for storing documents mainly, however for those media files, you can expand it using a microSD card. It has a MediaTek Helio P70 inside which I’m guessing would help them keep the costs low. More on the inside, there’s a 5MP camera and for the battery, there’s a 4,220mAh battery.

Planet Computers have overlaid the OS with some of their own applications that are geared towards getting work done. In settings, there’s a dedicated Cosmo settings area where you can adjust the keyboard backlight, for example, otherwise, there isn’t much else in the settings. The display is big but you still have big bezels which seem wasteful and make it look outdated in design. On the keyboard, there’s a Planet button, a bit like the Windows key on Windows computers and with this, you have access to a couple of Microsoft applications, Skype, airmail, agenda, notes, LEDison which lets you configure some LED animation lights to identify callers but a little redundant, and a Database app.

The Cosmos’s camera is ok, that’s as far as it goes. It’s not one for taking anything groundbreaking but it’s more than enough for social media images or just to add to documents and it can shoot FHD videos with EIS present. By default, the image quality is set to 18MP but you can change this to 24MP. The front-facing camera is very poor but will do for Skype calls.

The standout feature which is the full qwerty keyboard is pretty good once you get a hang of typing with it. It’s tiny so you definitely have to get used to it. You can comfortably type with it on a table or holding it if you really want to, although I find it a lot easier to use when on a table like a laptop. Since it’s landscape orientated, It means it’s quite awkward to use when the keyboard is not in use as just a touchscreen device especially in portrait mode, as you can’t hide the keyboard or fold it all the way behind the screen. Back on the keyboard, it’s not easy to type on it and key travel is not the best as it took me longer to put together my script using it than it normally would have.

Видео Cosmo Communicator Review: Nostalgia over Functionality? канала GadgetsBoy