(12-06-2019, 09:51 AM)Paranoid Wrote: Hi everybody,
I'm very much interested in the watch and will definitely get the final product once it's available. But I'm considering to buy the devkit already. I know it's more a developer's toy than a final product.
However: Can anybody tell or guess how close the hardware is to the final product? In other words: Can I make this what the final product will be by installing the final version of the software?
If you don't have at least some modest soldering skills, the developer version is useless to you. The firmware that comes flashed on the thing is just a demo, and there's no way to flash anything else on to a devkit without soldering a SWD header to the watch and attaching a debug probe to it. Obviously if Pinetime ever ships as a finished product that won't be the case any longer.
If you're still interested after that, then it is possible the hardware will change a little bit. There's some talk about using the version of the microcontroller that has 512K of flash and 64K of RAM, rather than the version the devkit is using which has 256K of flash/32K RAM. Also, possibly including 8MB of external flash rather than 4MB. However, even if this happens then the device will be substantially unchanged.
The extra external flash is pretty immaterial in my view, but if a version of the watch firmware is ever produced that supports third party applications then the extra RAM would mean that these apps could be larger and more complex. It is possible to imagine apps that would work on the upgraded watch but not the original devkit. This is imagining a future where Pinetime has an app ecosystem similar to the old Pebble watches, though. It's a bit speculative.
If you're interested and you're got some experience following open source build instructions, have some soldering skills and don't mind that you probably won't be able to wear the thing as a watch for a while yet, then you could get something out of the devkit as a pure user, not a developer. Otherwise, probably wait for a production watch.