I have mentioned a few times in the Pine64 community that they should really focus more on their compute modules. It means they can mass manufacture a single board that can be well tested, reducing overall risk and offering an upgrade path for their hardware. They can then fit their product lines with an appropriate module, even if this ends up being at the slight cost of size.
Another thing that kind of bugs me is that they currently have some "star devs" they send all of the new hardware too, but they are very over worked and split between many projects. Even they don't really get a heads up regarding what is in the pipeline. I believe if you want devs to be involved, you should somewhat consult them in the process.
> Many of the distros targetting Linux for mobile devices have people working on the important focus areas, but as a matter of necessity: to accomplish their goals when no one else is working on these problems, they had to become experts and divide their limited volunteer time between distro maintenance and software development.
Not sure if it's distro maintainers that become software devs, or the other way around.
> They are using the same SoCs across the compute modules and the products in cases, a lot of stuff is shared between them.
I'm aware, each device is essentially a "copy and paste" PCB with hardware repositioned - but because it is repositioned, there is no clear upgrade path. When a board breaks, you need to wait for another manufacturing run. The SBC from a PineTab won't work in a PineBook or a PinePhone or a A64 LTS board, despite them all having very similar capabilities, power requirements, etc.
Each of the boards also has their own set of hardware revisions, as "copy and paste" is never so straight forwards in hardware. They literally already have the answer to this problem though: standardize the hardware platform into modules.
Another thing that kind of bugs me is that they currently have some "star devs" they send all of the new hardware too, but they are very over worked and split between many projects. Even they don't really get a heads up regarding what is in the pipeline. I believe if you want devs to be involved, you should somewhat consult them in the process.
> Many of the distros targetting Linux for mobile devices have people working on the important focus areas, but as a matter of necessity: to accomplish their goals when no one else is working on these problems, they had to become experts and divide their limited volunteer time between distro maintenance and software development.
Not sure if it's distro maintainers that become software devs, or the other way around.