Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

Re: Calls and Email

"If anyone wants to talk to me, they can give me a call. Other forms of communication, for example email or social media, are available when I choose to use them – and via a linked device that allows me to use them more effectively.”"

I must admit that I might not have fully understood what they mean by "via a linked device".. If it can talk to a 3rd party device to ask for email then why not do it directly to a mail server ??

Re: Calls and Email

Read more carefully. It doesn't do email

IMHO that's a careless, probably fatal omission, for business use. I follow the logic that you could use a separate device, but when you're on the hoof and only have your phone that's a fat lot of good.

On the sort of enterprise policy restricted mobile devices I've come across, the camera and storage are made inaccessible, written policy forbids installing unapproved apps, and all the device is for is voice, text, email. With much improved battery life, and better security Punkt should have been on to a winner that cleaned up in the corporate space (although that side view that looks like a 1980s desk calculator seems like a dubious choice).

Good luck to anybody hoping to get directors and senior managers to accept this. It'll start well when you pick on senior managers who lack influence and have to take what they are given, as soon as you try and get any director or influential senior manager they'll simply say "no, not touching that it doesn't meet business needs". And it'll be even worse if these get handed out, people go "OK.....errr HOLD ON! Where's my f***ing email?" and then the IT team have to take them back in.

So near, and yet so far. They must surely have agonised over the email in-or-out decision, and then they went all purist, decided to leave it out, and created a product with a very restricted market.

Re: Calls and Email

@Julian Bradfield: "How I used to do email in about 2002"

Ha, me too, but it required a data cable plugged into the bottom of my old Nokia, and a Psion CF modem stuck into the top of a Compaq Ipaq : -) The I got a Nokia 7110 with IrDA but it was a bugger to keep aligned with the Ipaq on the train.

Re: Justified

Truly a shame that BlackBerry devices went under. They are STILL the most secure in the game. If the industry truly gave a d*mn about security, then BlackBerry would be thriving right now. :( :( :(

Re: Do you have a Gemini - if so what's it like?

Getting more and more into mine. It's a perfectly good Android* 4G/LTE smartphone, once you get into the habit of flipping it open and sometimes having to hold it up like an open book to do portrait-mode stuff. Once you start a call you can close it up again and look normal, you can also answer calls with it closed. Bit like those flip-up clip-on sunglasses, very practical once you get past the novelty factor. Dropbox plus WPS Office turn it into a productive netbook, with a small keyboard you will either love or hate. Some use it like a laptop, some two-thumbed like a smartphone (awkward for small hands, but if that's you then you can hold it like a book when on the move and bring up the standard Android soft keyboard, save the physical one for the table top), some hold in one hand and type with the other - I often do for quick messages or adding a stumbled-on contact. Integrated productivity apps echo the old Psions and get variable responses. Maybe Planet Computers should have called it the YMMV. I love it.

* The one to watch is the new Sailfish OS build, due out soon. You can dual-boot or just dump Android.