I’m a little confused, can this thing run standard linux cli packages?
What’s with the crappy, low end hardware?
It’s not crappy, it’s appropriate for the use case. This is not some flagship android phone, it’s meant for tinkering, for texting, maybe some mariocart on the metro. Also the thing doesn’t cost $1000+, which is a good thing.
The skeptic in me is a little suspicious, this sounds too good to be true. I’ve already been burned out from other crowdfunded projects where the company just dissapeared or simply couldn’t deliver anything before running out of money. Like the Pandora.
Nowadays I only back projects from companies that have successfully released something before, so this will be a wait and see. If they can deliver I may buy one when it’s released.
Nowadays I only back projects from companies that have successfully released something before
Which, ironically, is the opposite of what kickstarter was meant for.
I don’t need it… I don’t need it… I don’t need it… I don’t need it…
(M.2/NVMe, LTE and 5G, GPIO)
I don’t…
(Planned support for LoRa, Meshtastic, and FPGAs)
I…
(Everything open source, useful for me at work, employer will pay for)
Sold!
It doesn’t seem to be especially performant for games based on the videos they’ve put out, but a solid handheld with these specific features, and separate from my mission critical work android phone will hopefully be very useful.
No. You don’t need it.
Just get a used ThinkPad for work, and whichever handheld game console if you want to play while on a trip.
Run Linux on ThinkPad. It’s open source too.
It’s great you have a solution for yourself - and it’s good to share. But please don’t intentionally try to destroy someones excitement with something like “No, You don’t need it”. We don’t need more negativity.
I already have a work laptop running Linux, but it doesn’t support GPIO or LoRa without additional dongles/accessories. Working on industrial equipment while occasionally in remote locations, makes this device appealing to me specifically.
I’m also fortunate to have my employer willing to foot the bill, especially when they can also see the utility of this device in our line of work.
If you don’t work in this specific niche, your mileage will obviously vary.
Great! Go for it then.
I don’t know what’s LoRa though, but can’t you just plug an Arduino board to the computer’s USB port and get a bunch of GPIOs? It’s cheap. It’s durable.
Already done!
LoRa is a low power radio communication protocol that is very useful for warehouse and farming equipment, among many other things. I currently use ESP32s for GPIO, LoRa, and Wifi, and occasionally FPGAs for various tasks. But ad-hoc testing and diagnosis can be a pain for these devices, requiring multiple different dongles, power adapters, and converters.
If I can consolidate 75% of that gear into a single, handheld device, it will easily pay for itself in productivity gains.
LTE and NVME is mutually exclusive on the device I believe.
If all you need is a 3.92” screen, 8GB of ram or less, 128GB of space plus an sd card, and a tiny screen then it’s fine. Kickstarter though means unknown delivery date. I don’t think they’ve sold anything before?
That headline is every buzz word to tickle a Lemmy user’s taint. I say that with all the sincerity in the world because I too want one.
I hate how much this marketing works for me
Four hundred bucks for 8gb of ram, three face plates, the upgraded uber slow processor and 128gb of storage. 3.92” amoled screen.
Four fifty for an ayn Thor with 16gb of ram, 1tb nvme. 6” amoled screen and 3.92” bottom amoled screen.
That’s how I escaped the marketing. Pricing and specs. If your primary use case is just gaming and not a very low power handheld PC, it’s just not good.
A $90 miyoo mini plus 128gb is just fine for small portable handheld emulator too. Sold on Amazon and not a kickstarter fantasy that could take years. I’m sure there’s many other better options.
These things don’t have feature parity. They don’t do all the same things. They are however way better at what they do.
Lol me too!! After I looked I wasn’t too interested. Also crazy you mentioned Thor, that’s the device I don’t need that I can’t stop thinking about.
I have thought about the thor or whatever vita looking thing they have but the reality is that I probably wouldn’t do a ton of emulation right now. These devices look cool as hell, but I don’t need more tech ewaste/paperweights.
I have a deck and hardly use it when I go anywhere because being an adult is a shitload of responsibility and relationship work… and next to no time alone where I can game in peace. lol
If I still had a subway/train commute or I was still a bachelor in my 20s or 30s it would be another story though. Deck is way too big for the subway, but the thor is basically just a 3DS. I used a 3ds/vita/ds for over a decade almost daily because of my commute.
Which completely counters all the “if a product needs marketing it’s a lousy product” arguments
I think if a products budget is mostly spent on marketing it might be worth a miss.
If someone spend more effort advertising their product than they are developing it, then I would question their product.
However, a lot of people here seems to have negative sentiment against all forms of marketing. Hopefully I’m misinterpretting it.
It’s healthy to have that core value imo. I’m happy enough to work around that vs the algorithms we have normalized.
Is the whole bottom half just for a modular thingy. Could it just be a phone half that size, put a usbc on the bottom and some rails to accept an interlocking modular whatever.
I don’t see the point of this.
A smartphone is literally a handheld computer with more capability than this. Save for game controls, there is very little that a touchscreen doesn’t completely replace with full flexibility (besides, unless it’s the size of a Gameboy, the vertical controller layout sucks).
This isn’t a new concept either, as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen two phones and one whole laptop using this exact drop-in modularity gimmick. They all failed.
It runs an actual OS and has a real keyboard. Gives me way more utility than any smartphone.
Or, you could put the resources that went into this thing that’ll eventually become a forgotten novelty (e-waste), and develope a Linux smartphone that is fully open source.
Not gonna disagree with you, but that not something I personally have the skill nor the infrastructure to achieve so I’ll take what I can get.
Having a dedicated handheld device with the features of a smartphone, running Linux natively (not just android), and also GPIO and LoRa are what make this especially appealing to me. Everything being open source brings this from “I’ll probably buy this” to “shut up and take my money” for me personally.
Sure, I could probably get accessories to achieve the same thing with my work phone. But if something catastrophic happens and the phone is damaged, I’m having a very bad day. Damaging a $300-400 device sucks, but I can still call my boss and ask him to order a replacement and receive calls from customers at the end of the day.
Of course these specific benefits are unique to me and my line of work. I also thankfully have a boss who trusts my judgment when purchasing new tools and tech, and a budget that can easily accommodate this kind of investment and risk.
To some people, like half the comments and myself included, think the idea is that it’s cool. The playdate doesn’t solve any problems, it adds a gimmick to an existing format and its cool.
Y tho. Gaming seems like the only reasonable use case, and even that will depend on price as there are dozens of devices like this already. I would love a Linux phone, but give it a normal sized touch screen please
It will either fail, or be bought then cancelled by a big company like Google
Just missing Bluetooth. But it’s really cool! I guess you could plug in USB c headphones. Really like the HDMI port, could have done mini HDMI, but, regular size gives more flexibility. Edit: Oop it has Bluetooth, lost my money idk if I can stop myself from buying it
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mecha-systems/mecha-comet-modular-linux-handheld-computer
It says it has bt 5.4.
it looks like it’s a substandard phone with a mediocre gimmick
Does anyone know what happened to pinephone ?
What about it? The Pinephone is still available.
I meant its been ages but there no progress made. Shitty hardware and software still can’t be used for daily use
The software is pretty good in my experience. The biggest problem is the hardware was already old when the Pinephone launched 6 years ago. There is only so much optimization that can be done on decade old mobile hardware.
Ooooooo. I like it.
Modular computing always seems to fall victim to Moore’s law/similar, everything core get so much better every 5 years, that by the time you want to refresh anything, it’s usually time to upgrade the whole thing.
Periferals are nice but USB is already a multivendor connector standard and if the choice is 3d printing cases or trusting a vendor to exist in 10 years I’m betting on 3d printers for now.
Hope I’m wrong but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a project like this.
At the end of the day the n900 was the ultimate portable Linux machine, but it died because within 10 years you could do all of that on an android device AND have a decent phone too.
Good thing moore’s law is dead. Writing this from a 5yo phone. My pc got a 3700k. Something made today will have much more life in it
The base proc in this was slow when a phone released with it 5 years ago.
You are the exception, not the norm.
Most people are on the bandwagon of buying the shiny new thing with a bigger version number once every year or two (even when the old one still works perfectly).
The mecha comet is one of those devices that get hyped up among the nerds, but after a month 90%of them will either gather dust on a shelf or end up on the second hand market for cheap. You can see the same pattern in many nieche hardware subcultures, linux phones, flipper zero, raspberry pis, various digital music gadgets, AI bs hardware etc.
(I have like 20 random things like that rotting in a box, just to be transparent)
I feel called out lmao
I personally can’t say that I agree, especially in current economic conditions.
Many people do buy the shiny new things regularly, but I would argue that most people can’t afford that luxury and try to get the most life out of what they own.
On a separate note: I can’t speak to Linux phones, digital music gadgets, or AI hardware, but raspberry pis and flipper zeros on the second hand market are absolutely not cheap, and regularly sell for MSRP of new devices.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve struggled to find regular use of those 20 random things, but that doesn’t mean your experience is representative of most people.
4 of the pogo pins are standard USB pinout and there’s 2 USB Cs
