Why not SOPINE?

[bobpaul]

If this was discussed already, please forgive me. I only discovered Pine64 and Pinebook recently.

From what I've read about the Pinebook it looks like it basically uses a product specific laptop motherboard derived from the Pine64. When I first saw the product I was excited and assumed it contained a Pine64 or a SOPine. Then when a faster Pine64 SOC is released I could just swap boards for a cheap upgrade. 

I'm just curious why that route wasn't taken. $100 is a cheap laptop for sure, but I'd be willing to bet the keyboard, screen, and wifi etc are still good in 2 or 3 years and it would be nice to be able to re-use via upgrade. Maybe this is something you can consider for future models?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

hi, yes, electronically speaking the pinebook is an sopine in a nice case with nice keyboard and touch pad; but it does not use the sopine module nor base board.

The components are all mostly the same, AW SoC, axp803 PMIC, LPDDR3 memory, and similar layout ( although the card(s) are new. Whether it will be upgradeable or not is a question for the Pine engineers and TLLim;  however, I don't see why not.

I will be doing a tear-down video and posting to the forum after my unit comes out of warranty;  stay tuned.

marcus

[Luke]

If this was discussed already, please forgive me. I only discovered Pine64 and Pinebook recently.

From what I've read about the Pinebook it looks like it basically uses a product specific laptop motherboard derived from the Pine64. When I first saw the product I was excited and assumed it contained a Pine64 or a SOPine. Then when a faster Pine64 SOC is released I could just swap boards for a cheap upgrade. 

I'm just curious why that route wasn't taken. $100 is a cheap laptop for sure, but I'd be willing to bet the keyboard, screen, and wifi etc are still good in 2 or 3 years and it would be nice to be able to re-use via upgrade. Maybe this is something you can consider for future models?

I would imagine that the answer is as follows: Since there was already a reference design by Allwinner,  it was easier to improve on the reference design (btw, they sure did improve it!) than to create a design from scratch.

[bobpaul]

Whether it will be upgradeable or not is a question for the Pine engineers and TLLim;  however, I don't see why not.

You know, I hadn't considered the possibility of swapping the entire board out of the chassis. But you're right; my vision of a small glue logic/power board + sopine really isn't necessary to provide an upgrade path. Let's hope that's where it goes.

I would imagine that the answer is as follows: Since there was already a reference design by Allwinner,  it was easier to improve on the reference design (btw, they sure did improve it!) than to create a design from scratch.

I guess what I was thinking would have been to use the reference design but route to an SODIMM connector instead of directly to the A64. But I was missing the obvious reason that wasn't necessary...