This keyboard is perfect for people who write a lot on their smartphones. It is not meant for tweeting or writing emails, but if you frequently type out lengthy documents or blog posts, a keyboard is better than a screen. The Astro Slide 5G is made to look like a PDA from a bygone era and has two USB-C ports (one at each end), as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. If you want it to be your complete mobile workstation, you can install Linux OS on it if you’d like to use it as your own personal computer.
Design
Astro Slide 5G is a new type of smartphone that uses high-quality parts to support a high price. It is not a reference to any film franchise with enormous robots.
The phone’s 18.7mm thickness means that it has a profile akin to one of those tough phones made in China that have a 10,000 mAh battery. However, the battery capacity of this phone is not nearly as large. Instead, the Astro 5G’s designers provided it with a keyboard with all the usual favorites, like the cursor keys, shifts, and Ctrl.
The Android phone in question is the Moto G, which has a 6.39-inch AMOLED touchscreen that is big and colorful and the usual assortment of side-mounted buttons. The hinge on the keyboard is not fully fluid, meaning that it can’t swivel on the extended hinge to position the screen at an angle that resembles a small laptop. Additionally, the forces required to move the keyboard in and out are not fully fluid, making it difficult to type quickly or accurately.
Astro Slide 5G review: Display
The 6.39-inch FHD+ (2340 x 1080) AMOLED display on the Astro Slide 5G is a true standout. This phone is made for typing, not for playing games with frequent refreshes. However, high refresh rates are very helpful when navigating through apps, so it’s a shame that it doesn’t maximize an excellent display.
We watched Lightyear on Disney+ to test it out. The display masterfully captures all the hues of the T’Kani Prime landscape as everyone’s favorite space ranger (who falls with style) makes his first step onto the alien planet. It was a pleasure to see Buzz in such sharp detail, from the sun glinting off his shiny green and purple space suit to the faint hints of red leaves on top of trees.
We played Call of Duty: Mobile on a phone that runs on a 120Hz display. Although not the most graphically demanding game, the gameplay was fluid and on dispersed levels like Crash or Crossfire, it was simple to see attackers firing rounds at us in the distance. With the exception of the 120Hz-less refresh rates, this is the kind of display we’d anticipate for a phone at this price.
Keyboard
The Planet Computers smartphone is a marvel. It’s bulkier than a typical smartphone, but it has a full lettered keyboard, a number row, cursor keys, and an Enter key. It also has the crucial Function button, which enables many of the keys to serve as symbols or shortcuts for functions like brightness, volume, and others.
We found that when we type at our normal, reasonably quick pace, we miss keystrokes. We don’t know if it’s because each key needs to be pressed very firmly or precisely, but as we became faster, we noticed typos on the screen caused by letters we missed pressing keys that we had definitely pressed.
The Slide is a main selling feature of the device, and its value is harmed because we could never be completely certain that what we were typing would appear on the screen. Although you probably won’t write a dissertation or white paper about it, it will annoy you if some characters are missing from your shopping list or a line of code. When pressing the keys with only our index fingers, we were the most delighted with the keyboard.
The Slide is a dream for revising documents while they are being created, far superior to opening a Google Doc on a vertical smartphone when half the screen is taken up by a virtual keyboard after around 20 minutes. Although we used a UK keyboard, the Slide is available with virtually any regional physical keyboard layout, including versions for various European languages as well as Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Arabic.
Astro Slide 5G review: Software
Planet’s Astro Slide comes pre-loaded with a selection of its own apps, but when we tried to use email software Airmail, Google informed us that it had not yet been verified and advised against using it. On Android, we hardly ever observe this, so we were alarmed enough to avoid logging in. ..
We found that the calendar and notes apps were poorly designed and did not sync with our Google account. A dock and the ability to map other operations would be helpful, but otherwise, we found ourselves using the phone just like any other Android device and having trouble scrolling and finding items in landscape view. The Slide comes pre-installed with Android 11, but Planet informed me that an update to Android 12 is imminent.
Planet is pledging to release security updates for three years, but this timeframe is far from a guarantee. Currently, Android is the primary operating system, but it has promised that in the future, it will also be able to boot in Sailfish, Linux Debian, and Linux Kali.
Hardware and performance
MediaTek SoCs are popular among Chinese phone manufacturers because they are very affordable. They produce a wide range of SKUs that are tailored to fit various market niches, and they don’t appear to be experiencing the supply problems that have beset other SoC manufacturers. The MediaTek Dimensity 800 (MT6873), a premium SoC with an integrated 5G modem, four Cortex A76 and four Cortex-A55 cores, and a maximum clock speed of 2GHz, is the processor used by the Astro 5G. An ARM Mali-G57 MC4 GPU, which uses the same Valhall architecture as the Mali-G77 premium GPU, handles video. ..
The Dimensity 800 is a powerful SoC that is comparable to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G. This SoC has all the necessary qualifications to run the majority of Android applications smoothly and with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The AMOLED panel’s 2340 x 1080 resolution and highly saturated video and still images make those uses particularly alluring.
The Astro Slide is powered by a Dimensity 800 5G chip, which is not typically found in phones at this price point. The Oppo Reno4 Z 5G, a phone that cost less than half as much in 2020, is powered by this type of processor. Since it also has a respectable 8GB of RAM, navigating between apps and using the phone normally won’t be a problem. However, the Astro Slide’s average Geekbench 5 scores of 495 for single-core processing and 2104 for multi-core processing demonstrate just how far down the Android smartphone food chain it is. ..
The Galaxy S10’s 3DMark scores are better than those of devices using Snapdragon 695 processors, but they are more expensive. The main attraction of the Astro Slide crowdfunders is the physical keyboard, which takes precedence over all other features. We believe that none of them will eagerly turn on their phones in the hopes of playing a smooth game of Genshin Impact on high settings.
The Astro Slide falls short in a few key areas. For one, it doesn’t have a more contemporary and capable mid-range chip like the Dimensity 1200 or the Dimensity 1300. Additionally, 128GB of internal storage is a fairly competitive amount, and there is also a microSD slot for expansion. ..
Astro Slide 5G review: Camera
The camera setup on the Astro Slide is not very good. The single 48MP sensor is not very good, and HDR mode must be manually chosen. The camera is also quite over-exposed in many shots, which makes it difficult to capture accurate photos.
We found that when we turned on HDR, all of our images appeared strangely grainy, as if I were snapping the picture through a delicately textured window. The nighttime images are somewhat murky and grainy, but not the worst we’ve seen. Even so, the outcome is still one you would anticipate from a less expensive phone as opposed to one costing $729. While applying HDR or not, selfie photos lack in both detail and dynamic range.
The Astro Slide’s camera capabilities are best thought of as those of a tablet. It’s great that it can be used for social media posts, QR code scanning, and emergency documentation, but don’t rely on it to record any moments you genuinely want to save for posterity. Any respectable mid-range phone, like the Google Pixel 6a or the OnePlus Nord 2T, will outperform it in terms of photography. Again, though, if you’re only here for the photo, you’re kind of missing the point.
Battery life
The Astro Slide 5G is a great phone that has a battery that powers a screen and keyboard backlight. It lasted for 10 hours and 49 minutes in PC Mark’s Android battery rundown test, which is below the Realme 9 Pro’s 18 hours 30 minutes of battery life but on par with more expensive phones like the Realme C35 (10:40) and OnePlus 10 Pro (11:20). You can read our article on the Astro Slide 5G review.
The Slide’s battery life varied greatly depending on its specifications and usage. The Slide came with a wired USB-C charger and a 4000mAh battery, but in our testing, this charger painfully topped off at a rate of 1% per minute, which resulted in 15% in 15 minutes and 30% in 30. The time it took to reach 100% was almost 100 minutes. There is also built-in 10W (even slower) wireless Qi charging, but some of our wireless chargers wouldn’t work with it because it frequently registered but couldn’t draw enough power. ..
Price and availability
Planet Computers is currently offering the Astro Slide 5G for pre-order at a price of £711 in the UK. The phone is scheduled to ship on May 22, 2022, which is $908 in the US and €861.95 in the EU. You can specify the keyboard layout you need when placing your order with Planet Computers because they have a wide selection to choose from. ..
Conclusion
The Astro Slide 5G is a device that has two different aspects to it. One is its yin and yang aspect, which can be seen in the way that it is versatile and cutting-edge. Additionally, it has several clever features that can save you time and hassle. The other aspect of this device is its simplicity, which some find to be constrained. However, overall, the Astro Slide’s advantages outweigh its drawbacks. If you have a strong justification for using a physical keyboard, then the Astro Slide 5G is the best option for you.
