That is a great, great news. Unfortunately, I would prefer a device designed for thumb typing, i.e., with a narrower keyboard and smaller keys, whereas the Gemini is mostly designed as a mini-laptop and is best used on a table with full hands. It still makes the Gemini a more interesting product to me though, and I'll keep an eye on potential rebates or second hand devices.

I think it shows the nice mutual benefits between Sailfish and the Gemini (and potentially future HWKB devices like Chen's in case of similar partnerships), and it should bring extra media coverage on privacy-friendly OSes (which is timely after the latest scandals and the EU realization that people shouldn't give everything to Google/Apple/Facebook/etc.) and the comeback of hardware keyboards on mobile devices.

The latter is still shy but there's hope. After all, even Microsoft and Apple have started to advertise on their optional keyboards for tablets a few years ago. With the current trend towards phablets showing that customers are keen to using bigger phones for more browsing comfort if it helps rationalizing their devices, HWKB devices could claim a small user base among those that need productivity or need more than just reading content.

Since they offer keyboard shortcuts and full screen estate for the content, HWKB mobile devices are also much better terminals for using cloud computing services, another thing that is expanding very quickly these days as 4G is getting more accessible (see Shadow.tech, Rainway, Parsec, Moolinght, and so on). Some of them primarily target gaming, but they can do much more; see screenshots from my Jolla C here:





I'm not particularly a big fan of Windows, but there are many use cases for this, other host OSes will eventually be possible, and the Gemini can already boot under Debian. It looks like a regular VNC/Rdesktop/Teamviewer session, but in fact the stream is smooth with close to no noticeable latency thanks to a much better up bandwidth than the typical home computer, which is a game changer (and with their homemade application or even Parsec, the stream is optimized so you could play in 60 fps, watch videos or scroll text with no hiccups, but those apps require Android 5).

Now I'm not saying this should replace a local OS (some do, I strongly disagree, it's good to decentralize and to have an OS that is independent from network), but imagine how nice that could be with a keyboard and a stylus on the phone if you are in a country where unlimited data plans are affordable.