04-27-2017, 03:44 AM
(04-26-2017, 05:23 PM)bobpaul Wrote: 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.