Here's the latest Gemini PDA Indiegogo campaign update:
"It has been a very busy week as the campaign reaches its midpoint.
Thank you for all the messages of support, your contributions, your comments and your questions.
We have been actively finalising the product specifications taking into account your comments.
The main points raised have been the following:
- What are the Operating system versions and flavours?
- Is the Operating System upgradeable and how open is the platform?
- Will the device have a rear-facing camera or should we keep the beautiful design without having a rear-facing camera?
There have also been questions on the supported LTE bands and international keyboard layouts.
We are confirming that we will be aiming to launch with Android 7 on the Android side. On the Linux side, we are actively discussing with several companies including Canonical (Ubuntu), Jolla (Sailfish OS), Mediatek and others on how we can achieve a truly open Linux environment. We further confirm that we are committed to having an open platform and that the operating system will be upgradeable in both OS cases, Android and Linux. This means you will be able to re-flash the OS.
There has also been a lot of discussion on the pros and cons of having a rear-facing camera. There seems to be a lot of demand for this feature, but also some backers do not want to ruin the beautiful design of Gemini. The main issue with having the rear-camera is that the camera module is too thick for the top half of the Gemini as the camera module usually sticks out of the phone shape. So we are now considering having two different designs for the top cover: one as shown in the crowdfunding images and video and a new add-on cover that will have a camera module situated in the middle of the top cover - so that we can support both wishes. We have asked our design team to look into this. More details to follow on this.
We are now planning to visit Mediatek and their ODM partners in Taiwan and China in the next two weeks to start planning the final BOM of the product, the board and production plans. Meanwhile, we are focusing on the software and firmware development using Mediatek's development boards."