alt Hacker NewsIt would be great if all these companies contributed to a some kind of a unified modular platform like Project ARA. I see a lot of new devices, but they all do their own stuff. They produce hardware for their software, the end result is the same as with big brands. Most of these devices are usable while they are supported by these companies. Some of them allow installing custom Android roms, but not many.
Looks like the market just gets more fragmented without any improvements towards better sustainability/reusability. The only thing that really caught my attention recently was Pilet, a handheld Raspberry Pi. That's a really cool thing, that gives mobility while maintaining functionality.
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Am I the only one who just feels burnt out on these type of projects? We have a plethora of raspberry pi and other arm mobile developer kits that all just fail to deliver. They make great pet projects but fail at what most mobile phones do great which is provide a computer I can reliably and safely take with me in life. This pilet thing has 7 hours of battery life, is huge and will probably explode if I put it in my bikes bag.
While it's not perfect I've been investing more time into learning to live with grapheneOS. I can run Emacs and clang on the go. It's a better start that won't turn into a paperweight.
I hope not. Projects like that to have any chance at surviving have to be good phones first. Adding modularity will make it worse in terms of specs, more expensive and in the result dead on arrival. Once they launch a few successful (or at least sustainable) products, they can maybe try doing some modularity