An Italian company acquired the Commodore brand and will start using it, including the old logo, for Android smartphones. The first smartphone, named PET, will become available this week and will, among other things, run emulators by default.
The Italian company behind the smartphones claims to have acquired the brand in 38 different countries. To do some honor to the Commodore brand name the smartphone will run the VICE C64 emulator and Uae4All2-SDL Amiga emulator by default. Moreover, the phone will come with several retro-games, according to the Italians in an interview with Wired.
Aside from the name and the emulators the company's Android smart phone is pretty average. It includes a 5.5 "screen with resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and Gorilla Glass 3. The processor is a Mediatek-octa core with clock speed of 1.7GHz and Mali-T760 graphics.
On the back is a 13-megapixel camera and the front camera is an 8-megapixel variant. There will be two versions, one with 16GB of storage capacity and 2GB RAM which will cost 275 euros ($300) and one with 32GB internal memory and 3GB ram for 330 euros ($360). The OS is Android 5.0 with a custom skin. The smartphones will initially become available in Italy, France, Germany and Poland, other countries should follow.
It's not the first time a company is trying to ride on the still well-known Commodore name. In recent years C64-like PCs, netbooks, gaming PCs, game consoles and music players under the Commodore flag appeared on the market. Commodore was one of the largest computer manufacturers in the eighties that became especially famous with the Commodore 64.
The company sold 17 million of them, still a sales record for a single computer model. In 1994 the company went bankrupt and the brand name changed hands many times.
