Tom's Hardware is highlighting a Kickstarter project for the Pine A64, a 64-bit computer board competing on specs with the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B:
Essentially, the Pine A64 can be viewed as a more powerful next-generation Raspberry Pi device. The Pine A64 contains a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at 1.2 GHz. Compared to the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that was released earlier this year and uses four Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 900 MHz, not only does the Pine A64 have a higher clock speed, but it also has a more advanced architecture, which consumes less power and achieves greater performance.
For graphics processing, the Pine A64 uses the dated Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Although we cannot compare the performance of the GPU inside of the Pine A64 to the VideoCore IV inside of the Raspberry Pi without testing both devices, Pine64 stated that the Pine A64 will be capable of 4K video playback, whereas the Raspberry Pi is limited to a resolution of 1920x1200. This gives the Pine64 an edge and should help to attract users planning to use it as a small HTPC system.
The two main options, Pine A64 and Pine A64+, cost $15 and $19 respectively. The A64+ comes with double the RAM (1 GB DDR3 vs 512 MB DDR3) and three additional ports for camera, touch panel, and LCD accessories. Other price tiers come with 2 GB of RAM, and 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Smartphone users are usually torn between the two choice — Android or iOS. Their dominance is such that other competing OS like Windows, BlackBerry OS, or Symbian have almost been abandoned.Those who don't want either of them can opt for Pine64's Linux phone dubbed the PinePhone which offers good hardware and software at an affordable rate of $149.
The phone's specs aren't great, but it does include a headphone jack (I wonder if it's capable of using the JACK audio system?) and the article notes that it may provide physical switches for disabling various components. The company behind it, Pine64, also produce the PineBook Linux laptop, which also use an ARM processor.
Source: https://fossbytes.com/pinephone-linux-smartphone-149/
Related: Kickstarter: Pine A64, Cheaper and More Powerful than Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
Developers: How PINE64 is creating a community to compete with Raspberry Pi's
One of the consequences of the explosive popularity of the Raspberry Pi is the flourishing of competing ecosystems of single-board computers (SBCs). Aside from the accessibility a $35 price tag offers, the foremost benefit of the Raspberry Pi is the community—the proliferation of projects and integrations that center around the Raspberry Pi, and the ease-of-use that creates, makes competing products that look better on spec sheets a disappointment when taken out of the box.
PINE64 has attempted to head this off by fostering an involved community; the PINE64 website explains their philosophy as "the community gets to actively shape the devices, as well as the social platform, of PINE64 from the ground up. The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of." The first-generation Pinebook was available in an 11.6" or 14" configuration, with a quad-core Allwinner A64, 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and 1366x768 display for $99, beating Nicolas Negroponte's OLPC XO-1, a decade after that project sputtered.
PINE64 is differentiating itself by building not just SBCs, but notebooks, tablets, and phones with community input and feedback. Ahead of the release of the Pinebook Pro this summer, a Rockchip RK3399-based ARM laptop with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB eMMC, and a 14" 1080p display, TechRepublic interviewed PINE64 community manager Lukasz Erecinski about the Pinebook Pro, and the PINE64 community philosophy.
Previously: Kickstarter: Pine A64, Cheaper and More Powerful than Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
PinePhone Linux Smartphone Priced at $149 to Arrive This Year
Pinebook Pro Update: The $199 Linux Laptop is Almost Ready to Go
If you missed out on the last pre-order for the BraveHeart release of the PinePhone that shipped last January, you have another opportunity to buy now. What is it? According to their Wiki:
The PinePhone is a smartphone created by Pine64, capable of running mainline Linux and supported by many partner projects. The "BraveHeart" edition was the first publicly-available version of the phone, though it came without a fully functional OS (factory test image) and was geared specifically towards tinkerers and hackers. People looking for a stable consumer-grade phone should wait for the final release...
The "Community Edition: UBports" Limited Edition PinePhone is aimed primarily at UBports community members, willing to run their OS on a mainline Linux and provide feedback to UBports developers.
The "Community Edition: UBports" Edition PinePhone comes with UBports OS build installed. Please note that the OS build is still in a beta stage, and while most core functionality (phone calls, SMS messages, LTE, GPS and GPU acceleration) works, some elements remain a work-in-progress.
The phone seems to be the same hardware as the Braveheart and the same price $149.99 + shipping. Pine will donate $10 to the UBPorts Foundation for every phone purchased.
It comes pre-installed with UBPorts, but there is nothing keeping you from re-flashing to whichever OS you want. Currently there are several ports in progress like, Debian, PostmarketOS, SailfishOS, Maemo Leste, etc. Some of these can even make phone calls and sms texts already :)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday December 11 2015, @05:07AM
Lemme get all cranky pants and rain on the parade...
Yea, really kick ass..... if it actually becomes real. Every swingin dick thinks they can sell a product for a buck over the bill of materials and even crazier notions. Then if they manage to even get enough idiots to fund them they have to actually deliver product. Even passing that hurdle doesn't mean success, the darned things have to actually work, they have to stay in business long enough to honor a warranty and discover if they left enough in the margin to cover that expense. Then with luck enough sell to actually get enough users to have a shot at having one or two software updates to fix some of the teething bugs that shipped because newbs tried their hand at design and rushed getting the base software image thrown together at the last minute.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @08:25AM
Well, your rant has but only one flaw. You think they'll think about honoring the warranties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @01:44PM
you mean like about every other investment in history?
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Friday December 11 2015, @10:33PM
I've backed over 70 Kickstarter campaigns. Thus far, exactly zero have failed to deliver - though some deliver quite late, and a couple are still pending. This isn't generally true, but you (or at least I) can easily tell which are legit and which are blowing smoke.
For example, I backed the Udoo and the CHIP. Both of these delivered, and it's in the same space as this project. Now, it's possibly the project could be a bad apple... but railing against all crowd funding as fraudulent is demonstrably false. Like most things, do your due diligence.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Friday December 11 2015, @06:19AM
... there is no mention of free GPIOs and such. I don't understand the Raspberry as a cheap desktop to introduce kids to computers. Maybe I'm wrong, but my perception was that the Raspberry was mainly to get kids to build stuff themselves, as in connect and control their own hardware and gadgets. Therefore it is totally irrelevant it is running 32-Bit, as long as it has the universal GPIOs. The most interesting Raspberry-projects are robots and alike. It's much easier to use than an arduino because it runs Linux and can be programmed in python, lots of existing SW can be used to e.g. play mp3 from command line, and if a GPIO is blown the board is not too expensive to replace.
I did use my raspberry as a media-center for some time as well. I know others are impressed - I wasn't, because of the bad connectivity for mass storages. And the Pine doesn't improve on that, either. As a media-center or desktop, an Intel NUC (or probably a similar AMD product) is much better suited.
My projects to far were a pet-feeder made of Lego, a small step-motor and some string. Took me one afternoon, worked perfectly, peaked the interest of my son.
Currently I'm working on an alarm-clock. It's a wooden box with 3 SW-controlled power-outlets and Speakers. "Display" will probably be a binary clock [wikipedia.org]. To have a frontend to configure alarm-times, sleep-mode for power-outlets etc. (e.g. power of reading light after one hour), I'll probably install a Jenknis server.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Friday December 11 2015, @07:26AM
but my perception was that the Raspberry was mainly to get kids to build stuff themselves, as in connect and control their own hardware and gadgets
Not really. They originally made it difficult to access the header by unpopulating it because it is 1.8V logic and just about anything you connect to it without taking precautions is going to kill it. They vastly underestimated the determination of the hacking community of course and now there is a vast ecology around the Pi, second only to the broken design Arduino standardized around AVR chips.
I really and truly do not understand the initial goal for the Pi and I doubt the founder is clear on it. His statements contradict themselves and none of them wouldn't have been better served by a bootable USB stick and USB I/O dongle.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday December 11 2015, @09:17PM
Pretty sure the Pi is 3.3V logic, but you can get it to run at 5V without a problem. I have a Pi B+ that I was using as a media center, and I used a cheap powered USB hub modified to backfeed power to the Pi through the data connector. The hub actually puts out around 7.5V, and not only does the Pi tolerate that just fine, it gets the GPIO pins up to 5V, which means I could wire them directly to some Radioshack 5V relays. I then drilled some holes in my stereo and projector and just wired those relays across whatever buttons I needed to control. Worked flawlessly for over a year, though I've since upgraded to a full PC which I'm using as a Steambox. But I now own five Pis that I'm using in various places. They're excellent little devices. And in my experience, I absolutely do just connect it to anything without taking any precautions (I know software, not hardware :) ) and I've yet to kill a single one.
By comparison, I've used some microcontrollers in the past (mostly MSP430s), and it usually takes more than a week just to get the development environment running (assuming I don't just give up first.) I've never actually gotten anything useful running on one of 'em, I get halfway there and get so frustrated I give up. With the Pi you just wire crap together, write up a quick shell script, and it's done. If hardware isn't your thing, the Pi is beautiful.
You could buy a dozen Pis for the price of the computer you would need to connect those USB devices too.
Hell, the Pi is probably about the same cost as those two USB dongles alone.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday December 11 2015, @10:32AM
Took me one afternoon, worked perfectly, peaked the interest of my son. Currently I'm working on an alarm-clock. It's a wooden box with 3 SW-controlled power-outlets and Speakers. "Display" will probably be a binary clock [wikipedia.org]. To have a frontend to configure alarm-times, sleep-mode for power-outlets etc. (e.g. power of reading light after one hour), I'll probably install a Jenknis server.
You better make sure your son doesn't take that sort of "clock" to school!
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday December 11 2015, @04:45PM
Actually he was already asking me, and also asking if he can get two spare-wires and some grey dough around the size of a brick. Wonder what he was planning ... ;-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Friday December 11 2015, @10:33AM
Wouldn't buy, because there is no mention of free GPIOs and such.
WRONG, [pine64.org] McFly! [pine64.org] Now make like a tree... and get out of here! ;)
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday December 11 2015, @12:47PM
Thanks for the info. This was neither mentioned in the summary, nor in TFA, nor on the kickstarter page.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by rob_on_earth on Friday December 11 2015, @02:01PM
its hidden deep in the Kickstarter QA section under "What type of hardware interfaces that Pine A64 have?"
Depending on the model, all the Pine A64 has 46 dedicated GPIO pins, three UART, two i2c bus, two SPI bus, i2s audio, SPDIF out, IR receiver, Speaker out, 3v3, 5v, and ground. In the “PLUS” model, there are additional three ports: CSI-Camera, Touch Control, and DSI-LCD Panel.
*emphasis mine
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rob_on_earth on Friday December 11 2015, @08:31AM
I have had a Zaurus and NSlu2 and a O2 Joggler. Each fine machines with lots of promise and each one had its "community" time where enough people were doing enough to keep the interest alive. Each is still usable today but when basic packages don't get upgraded for years at a time, my and it would appear many others "stickability" wears thin.
The rate of new Pi hardware and huge (do not under-estimate) community constantly churning out new stuff and revisiting old is making this the platform to cling too. The reason the Pi got so much love was the goal of the foundation was education, the makers things was just a fun side note.
Any challenger has not only got to be better and cheaper(arguably) but have a bigger and more dedicated community.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Friday December 11 2015, @10:41AM
they went out of their ways to have a "Pi-2 bus" connector [pine64.org] so hardware and code that uses that interface on the RPI2 would also work on this board.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Friday December 11 2015, @05:19PM
The rate of new Pi hardware and huge (do not under-estimate) community constantly churning out new stuff and revisiting old is making this the platform to cling too.
Unfortunately you are right about many parts but not the cling to it thing. Well maybe "cling to" is the right phrase after all. Cling as in "oh shit honey don't leave me I can change!!!!!!" not "this is a good technological thing to follow."
I've got about 4 Pi boards here, a large pile of Arduinos of many models, and Beagle Bone boards. The Pis are the least well thought out boards in terms of connectors and functionality. I don't know if the current Pi boards still suffer from the problem where the USB and Ethernet port don't physically line up. That turns me off so fast and what really blows me away is the problem is ignored by people and in many pictures of Pi models impacted by it the device is very carefully positioned so you can't see it. That is some really epic levels of marketing wizardry from a technical education foundation.
Open source project but poorly selected system on a chip that can never be fully open source because of vendor driver problems, header pins that don't fit the use case of bread boarding and rapid prototype well, super ultra shitty power regulator on board, all lead by an organization that doesn't see this as a problem.
Out of all the single board computers I have the Pis are most likely for me to give to a 4 year old so they can play with them. And by play I mean go outside and dig a hole with them because they fucking suck.
(Score: 3, Funny) by theluggage on Friday December 11 2015, @06:39PM
I don't know if the current Pi boards still suffer from the problem where the USB and Ethernet port don't physically line up.
<sarcasm>
You're right, the face of the Ethernet connector on the original Pi is a good 3mm back from the USB. I can't believe that I allowed a device with such a hideous fault into my house without noticing - I guess it was a marketing conspiracy. I blame those rainbow-coloured cases: they looked cute at the time but now its clear that they used the 'dazzle ship' principle to obscure the heinous misplacement of the ethernet port. I won't sleep tonight, I'll just toss and turn thinking about all the tragic cataclysms that could have arisen from a slightly recessed ethernet port. I guess I'll have keep my fingers crossed over the weekend and call in a hazmat team to remove it on Monday.
I notice that the model 2 has the ports lined up correctly... but now I just feel so violated that I don't think I can trust a Raspberry Pi again.
You'd think that this thing had been deliberately designed to be cheap rather than perfect or that the 'better' alternatives were either more expensive or not actually available to buy ('pledge $X to our kickstarter and hopefully get the product in a few months' is not comparable to 'available to buy for $X').
</sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Friday December 11 2015, @08:23PM
You're right, the face of the Ethernet connector on the original Pi is a good 3mm back from the USB. I can't believe that I allowed a device with such a hideous fault into my house without noticing.
Yup most people don't pay attention to that kind of detail. Apparently also the people who designed the first generation Pi. There are other things like they don't break out the i2s interface that exists on the SoC itself but is not accessible. Now we get Pi pinout backwards compatible much higher performance devices that live with this and other restrictions because of a bad idea a while ago.
You'd think that this thing had been deliberately designed to be cheap rather than perfect or that the 'better' alternatives were either more expensive or not actually available to buy ('pledge $X to our kickstarter and hopefully get the product in a few months' is not comparable to 'available to buy for $X').
And that's why it makes a better shovel than computer. Pro tip: it can be cheap and also not stupid. Being clingy is fun ain't it?