Suggestion: better performing pinephone
02-13-2021, 04:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-13-2021, 04:08 PM by dsimic.
Edit Reason: Fixed a couple of typos
)
Quite frankly, we should all be very thankful for the fact that PinePhone exists at all, especially at such a low price. We should actually be happy that it uses old Allwinner A64 SoC, which has been around a while, and as such is pretty well known inside out. That allows good software support (i.e., mainline Linux kernel support), which is still work in progress.
However, I do agree that a die shrink of A64 would be great, with lower power consumption and all, but that's probably never going to happen because it would have no economic sense to Allwinner. Unless Pine64 manages to ship millions of PinePhones and pursuades Allwinner to invest into a die shrink.
The way I see PinePhone is a nice, open embedded computer that can also be used as a phone. I would never expect PinePhone to run any 3D games, simply because that's not reasonable. The market for handheld game consoles (or highly capable smartphones) is already overcrowded, so selecting one to enjoy some games should be no problem.
Furthermore, having not so powerful hardware as the target platform is actually beneficial for the software quality. Poorly written software runs fast on fast hardware, but only very well written software runs fast on slow hardware.
However, I do agree that a die shrink of A64 would be great, with lower power consumption and all, but that's probably never going to happen because it would have no economic sense to Allwinner. Unless Pine64 manages to ship millions of PinePhones and pursuades Allwinner to invest into a die shrink.
The way I see PinePhone is a nice, open embedded computer that can also be used as a phone. I would never expect PinePhone to run any 3D games, simply because that's not reasonable. The market for handheld game consoles (or highly capable smartphones) is already overcrowded, so selecting one to enjoy some games should be no problem.
Furthermore, having not so powerful hardware as the target platform is actually beneficial for the software quality. Poorly written software runs fast on fast hardware, but only very well written software runs fast on slow hardware.