rockbook

[stuartiannaylor]

...I would say 1080p & backlit keyboards on a rk3288 would be a complete mismatch in cost spectrum...

lol nothing compared to all those 2160p@60Hz@10bit TVs

Those TV's are not powered by a battery or embedded into the unit!? also doh rk3328 bit of number dyslexia there.

Its the whole point of a netbook and Asus are saying with a pinch of salt you can get up to 9 hours battery usage out of the RK3399 as it is.
If you embed high res HD screens & backlit keyboards you are going to kill battery life and make the unit very expensive with a relatively low end processor.

Back to the RK3399
There is a version of the RK3399 board where both Nagrace NT-V9 & Vorke Z3 have included sata.
Its not some horrid USB/Sata bridge its full blown PCIe 2.0 with 2 full Sata 3.0 ports.
The Nagrace does this weird thing with a USB3.0B male Interface which still getting my head round.
Both have gig ethernet & 802.11ac with ap & sta modes which for a board could be really handy.

The RK3399 has been designed with the aim of making a great chromebook and it would make an awesome linux netbook.
With the ability for on board true PCIe Sata 3.0 with no USB/Sata bridge fudge this could also make a great dev board on its own that is the big brother to the Rock64 at about double the price.

I have a gut feeling because of the the interest the RK3399 is getting from chromebooks, dev boards, tv boxes it will have the economies of scale where its price will drop and will be around long time.

I would love Pine to continue with the current Pinebook as a lowend netbook, skip the rock64 and utilize a RK3399 in an extremely versatile laptop maybe call it the PineLap as the step up to the Rock64 is only incremental or just offer it as a possible upgrade.
That RK3399 I want one as a dev board where the supplier has been clever enough to include 2x Sata3.0 ports.

[elatllat]

Screen resolution really has negligible impact on battery life (as is evident with 4k mobile phones), if you want to save power use an eink display like the YotaPhone 2; it would cost more and only be worth it if used hardware and software (android) that sleeps properly, but I'd rather a cheap (<$99) 1080p LCD.

[stuartiannaylor]

Just got my Rock and its better than I thought so maybe, browsing with Chromium with Xenial mate is perfectly adequate.
Do notice the diff with my I5 obvs but actually been using the Rock64 as a desktop for a couple of hours now without even thinking of swapping to the PC.

Still want that RK3399 though  

[AndyK]

I guess that since we already have Pinebook and Rock64 the steps required to make a “RockBook” are smaller than starting from scratch with a new chip. A lot of the hardware and Linux work can be built upon. I’d love to see an upgrade where I can swap out the CPU pcb in my Pinebook to upgrade it. If there was a kickstarter for that I’d sign up today.

While a bigger jump to RK3399 and 1080p might be desirable I’d rather see a roadmap with smaller achievable steps to get there. Especially if there is an upgrade path and existing hardware can be upgraded.

[elatllat]

I wonder if the rock64 could be made to work with the 1080p pi-top

[stuartiannaylor]

I guess that since we already have Pinebook and Rock64 the steps required to make a “RockBook” are smaller than starting from scratch with a new chip. A lot of the hardware and Linux work can be built upon. I’d love to see an upgrade where I can swap out the CPU pcb in my Pinebook to upgrade it. If there was a kickstarter for that I’d sign up today.

While a bigger jump to RK3399 and 1080p might be desirable I’d rather see a roadmap with smaller achievable steps to get there. Especially if there is an upgrade path and existing hardware can be upgraded.

Yeah my only concern was my own experience with the RK3328 and now I am getting to grips with the state of play more with available kernels, distro's and the important rockchip drivers I will share my opinion.

If we are talking about that BlissOS android desktop then maybe haven't looked at android but others will have to tell me.

On Linux its sort of complex and full of cul-de-sacs that often have you wishing for Wayland or other non X11 window managers or some form of driver compatibility with OpenGL ES.

Currently the graphics performance is pretty stinky and the RK3328 would make a stinky laptop, in my opinion.

I mention the RK3399 because looking at Rockchip it seems to have a higher order of preference and is looking like it may be complete for Android, Chromium OS & Linux before its cheaper cousin.

Kernel 4.14 and incarnations of distro's to be released is basically a stepping stone, but currently in my mind the RK3328 would make such a bad netbook it just doesn't compute.
Just opinion and the idea of a bulky netbook whilst many people have vastly more capable phones puts the RK3328 into a no mans land where the completed cost would be hard to justify the finished pruduct.

Maybe if the whole DRM, X11, Wayland, Rockchip drivers comes together then for some it might be a great netbook, but for me it will always be a mweh of a TV box in a netbook case.
RK3399 by the time everything comes together with a bit of look should be shipping at prices that could make an extremely interesting an capable extensible netbook platform.

But its just opinion and for me RK3328 = device, RK3399 = netbook and its sort of what the Rockchip engineers designed for.

I am digging the RK3328, the current wait for drivers and kernels with a relatively new platform is a bit frustrating.
I have a plethora of ideas for devices I can make, but netbook isn't really one on the list, for me at least.

[AndyK]

I wonder if the rock64 could be made to work with the 1080p pi-top

Interesting thought but I guess that all the bits and pieces like power and battery management, display brightness, sound  etc are hardware specific and tie in with Pi Top's own OS and unlikely to work with the OS images for Rock 64 without some hackery?

---

But its just opinion and for me RK3328 = device, RK3399 = netbook and its sort of what the Rockchip engineers designed for.

Roadmaps and product planning are (for me) all about working out how you can leverage the most out of a platform. Pinebook leverages on Pine64 and Sopine. Bit of a shame that Rock64 is one of the cul-de-sacs you mention.  

For my day-job, I've been looking at lower end ARM MCUs from the likes of TI, NXP, ST Micro, etc. There's some interesting silicon out there but what makes or breaks the deal isn't the chip - its the software, driver and BSP support. If its not there, or flaky/unfinished, then the hours of development needed can make a chip non-viable. Some vendors get this and some don't. I guess it's a similar problem.

[stuartiannaylor]

I wonder if the rock64 could be made to work with the 1080p pi-top

Interesting thought but I guess that all the bits and pieces like power and battery management, display brightness, sound  etc are hardware specific and tie in with Pi Top's own OS and unlikely to work with the OS images for Rock 64 without some hackery?

---

But its just opinion and for me RK3328 = device, RK3399 = netbook and its sort of what the Rockchip engineers designed for.

Roadmaps and product planning are (for me) all about working out how you can leverage the most out of a platform. Pinebook leverages on Pine64 and Sopine. Bit of a shame that Rock64 is one of the cul-de-sacs you mention.  

For my day-job, I've been looking at lower end ARM MCUs from the likes of TI, NXP, ST Micro, etc. There's some interesting silicon out there but what makes or breaks the deal isn't the chip - its the software, driver and BSP support. If its not there, or flaky/unfinished, then the hours of development needed can make a chip non-viable. Some vendors get this and some don't. I guess it's a similar problem.

I think rockchip do or at least there collaboration with google on the RK3399 is forcing them to.
Its not just rockchip as in latter kernel releases there has been a rake of Arm patches an absolute plethora in 4.14 alone and many before.
It looking like the rk33xx series apart from vendor deviation will have default support but problem is early adoption.

If you look on github there are new fixes patches and dev almost everyday, practically every day, so its time.
4.14 is in November and Ubuntu 17.10 days to go and 18.04 is April which is that balance between product lifetime and early adoption.

[elatllat]

...all the bits and pieces like power and battery management, display brightness, sound  etc are hardware specific and tie in with Pi Top's own OS and unlikely to work with the OS images for Rock 64 without some hackery?...

There is a github repo here for adding that stuff to stock debian mentioned here.