Are there plannes to create a new and more powerfull PinePhone Pro?

[Nima0908]

Hello,
iam pretty interested in the PinePhone Pro and really like the concept. But sadly, 4Gib RAM and the RK3399S are just too week for todays use. Now my question is if there are plannes to bring out a new version with more ram (like 8Gib or so) and a better chip (Like the RK3588), or to bring just a new mainboard with upgraded parts that can be swapped out.
Thank you for your help

[Peter Gamma]

According to my own little experience, the next Pinephone which fit s better to the customers needs is based on a Raspberry Pi or an Orange Pi or another SBC and is built by the costumers themselves based on instuctions which can be found in the web.

[franzthiemann]

According to my own little experience, the next Pinephone which fit s better to the customers needs is based on a Raspberry Pi or an Orange Pi or another SBC and is built by the costumers themselves based on instuctions which can be found in the web.

I really don't think that this is a great solution. Modularity is great, but the split between the regular pinephone and the pro has already hampered developement quite a bit. (Camera support for instance)
The performance of the pinephone pro is also not too bad if hardware acceleration is working.
For the next generation of pinephone pro (which is hopefully comming since the current one has sold out) I really wish for more reliable and refined hardware.
To develop software as a community, pine64 must ensure that the hardware works, and works uniform between all pinephones.

Areas I have realistic hopes for improvement:

• Battery management and charging 
  As documented plenty of times the RK818 just does not fit the purpose as it is designed for low power devices with a fixed battery
  A new charge controller should avoid persistant fuel gauging and support modern fast charging of at least 15W (limit of the batteries) so 9V2A.
  
• Stepping of the processor/gpu
  While a new SOC might not be necessary, a new batch could fix some hardware problems of the SOC, like some of the usb reset problems and gpu problems for a working vulkan driver
  
• Hardware solution for the Cameras
  It has become obvious that controlling the image pipeline of the SOC is too hard. New cameras should implement the image processing in hardware and not require any post processing (like usb webcams)
  
• Maybe a decent speaker
  

[Corconegre]

Hello,
iam pretty interested in the PinePhone Pro and really like the concept. But sadly, 4Gib RAM and the RK3399S are just too week for todays use. Now my question is if there are plannes to bring out a new version with more ram (like 8Gib or so) and a better chip (Like the RK3588), or to bring just a new mainboard with upgraded parts that can be swapped out.
Thank you for your help

Might be disappointing but they sent a message to the telegram channel stating that the pinephone pro will be discontinued due to low sales.
Some refurbished items might go on sale but thats it.
For now, no plans to make any new pinephone, although this might change...

[Kevin Kofler]

Even worse, they announced that they want to focus instead on RISC-V stuff (uh, come back when this delivers even remotely the same performance at the same price as ARM) and AI (ewww, no thanks, just no!).

[biketool]

Even worse, they announced that they want to focus instead on RISC-V stuff (uh, come back when this delivers even remotely the same performance at the same price as ARM) and AI (ewww, no thanks, just no!).

For now yes, but relying on the whole NDA.legal mess of relying on the ARM ecosystem is why there are almost no fully FOSS mobile devices.  Even gadgets like Nokia N900 and Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 were encumbered with a fixed kernel version and closed blob drivers for those devices. 
RISC-V means we have full control of our CPU design, it still needs accessory hardware which openly publishes the required information to write open drivers, then we can actually have devices which fully respect and serve the owner/purchaser and not the seller, OS author, or carrier((edit) and those drivers can be kernel upgraded forever for any OS).
(EDIT) It is interesting there is an AI optimized computing core included in the custom fabed Rockchip RK3399S CPU.