I agree... I use a Pi4B 8GB as a home server with a number of duties.

Less power consumption than the Pi 5 (and no heatsink), and it was the first to offer the combination of USB booting, more than 1GB RAM, and Gigabit Ethernet. And reasonably priced in 2019.

I really wish they made a new Zero that doesn't use ddr2 ram to ensure that it can still be made far into the future. As far as I'm aware, nobody is making ddr2 anymore

There is an unbelievable amount of e waste created because OEMs locked the software down and stopped updating it. I have an android tablet which is functionally working but effectively useless.

"an OS that behaves like a real computer that you can put on an old/cheap commodity phone": https://postmarketos.org/

"an app that creates a programmable environment layered over and isolated from the suffocating mobile OS": Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) on newer Android versions provides a hypervisor and a hardware-accelerated graphics (VirGL) for AVF virtual machines, allowing users to run an isolated Linux GUI desktop with low overhead.

I have been trying out the FX1s. It is a good replacement with some rough edges still. Better battery life than previous Pixel 6a and Fairphone 4.

Dock can not handle an Ultrawide 1440x3440 display.

Right now it is a backup phone and my music player.

https://furilabs.com/

The 80s kid in me still thinks dropping someone into a linux shell with a bunch of tools and no internet access is the best learning environment. Kids these days with their fancy tiktoks and such need to summon the old ways.

This was over 10 years ago, and the original price was something like £35.

It was tiny, and the assumption was correct - most families had an HDMI capable TV and could afford the device and a usb keyboard.

A used PC still needs a desk and a monitor. This was far more accessible.

There are also lots of cheaper SoMs if you're not allergic to Chinese chipsets, and the cheaper ones tend to have PoP on-package DDR so you can spin your own 4-layer PCB without having to pull your hair out impedance matching DDR3+ traces. That, of course, if you can fit into ~64MB RAM.

> The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel

NXP/i.MX are way better at mainline kernel than Broadcom that RPi is based on, come on.. and they have cheaper options like i.MX 9 series. Other vendors, yes, mainline support could be pretty spotty.

The corporations are paying for the product. The pi foundation could invest that in to making more and developing the product further.

They launched the compute module which was intended for industrial use a mere two years after the first Pi.

Sure, but none of the hardware peripherals routed out to those pins are exclusive to that pin header.

If you need a few i2c or SPI or uart buses or even just general purpose IO then AliExpress has a gazillion little USB based modules that will get you exactly that.

If you're still very new to electronics and not at all comfortable going outside of well-established curriculum that explicitly says use this raspberry pi with this sensor attached on these pins with this library configured in this way... Yes. But that can't be most of the people paying this price?