Readers over a certain age will remember the glorious, though brief, age of the personal digital assistant: pocket-size gadgets, typically though not always in clamshell format, exemplified by Psion’s classic Series 5MX. The rise of the smartphone was the death of the PDA, but there’s a company still clinging to the dream: Planet Computers, with its Gemini PDA.

Reviewed in the latest HackSpace Magazine in Gemini 4G form, which adds an LTE radio for data and voice traffic allowing the device to double as a cumbersome smartphone, the Gemini traces its lineage all the way back to the Psion Series 5. Sadly, as a loaner Series 5MX kindly provided by The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) proved, the resemblance is only skin-deep: the clever sliding keyboard mechanism of Psion’s design is replaced in the Gemini by a straightforward fold supported by a too-weak metal hinge at the back which only loosens over time.

Given HackSpace’s target audience, my review focused less on the device as supplied – running Android 7 – and more on how it acts when given a customised version of Debian Linux supplied for the more technical user by Planet Computers. Installation wasn’t straightforward, sadly, and use even less so – and a battery life test revealed the unoptimised nature of the Debian port, cutting nearly four hours off the device’s lifespan during a video playback test.

I’m still a believer that there’s a demand out there, albeit small, for what would be a true Psion Series 5MX successor: robust, chunky yet pocket-size, with an outdoor-readable display based perhaps based on colour E-Ink technology. Sadly, the Gemini isn’t it.

The full review is available now, both in print and as a free-as-in-speech-and-beer digital download from the official website.