Stumbled across this thing a while back and thought it looked really cool but I have never been able to come up with an idea for how I would use it so I haven't pledged.
I want to want it but I fear it would just sit on my desk. Does anyone have cool ideas for uses?
Dude it would be so great to have a little device and you text it SMS messages as prompts. Then it just sits there and thinks away probably getting really hot lol.
So... what's the OS situation? From a glance at https://github.com/mecha-org/linux -> https://github.com/mecha-org/linux/commits/imx/lf-6.12.20/ it looks like they're starting from a 6mo-old kernel (6.12.20 vs current LTS 6.12.67 and current stable 6.18.7). Is there any reason to expect upstreaming or even just consistent updates, or is this yet another device that will ship with an old-ish kernel and never get updated again?
Small gimmicky computers seem to attract so much attention and people who can’t help themselves but buy it, play with it for a while, then toss it into a drawer and never use it again.
A powerful-enough pocket computer that can run a "real" OS with good input is the holy grail. Specialized types (gaming platforms mostly) seem to be converging on a few specific designs, but full general-purpose computers with keyboards etc still haven't really produced a "good enough" model. I used my GPD Win 2 daily when I was traveling often and frequently found myself in situations where it wasn't convenient to carry or use a full laptop due to weight/size, and even that thumb keyboard is 10000x better than a touchscreen keyboard in termux etc. There's definitely a niche to be served by either a better design or reimagining of the interface.
Website's a bit weird. The app icons highlight when you hover over them, but don't seem to do anything.
They've got a grab-bag of unrelated Linux etc. org icons - Nix, Debian, postmarketOS, Node, Kubernetes… You could argue that someone _could_ run Nix or Node on it, but Debian is just nerdbait. It's not relevant to the product they're selling, unless you're gonna wipe the disk and support it yourself.
Open Hardware + Open Software is good enough for me to hit the buy button.
Seems like a good toy, I hope I don't lose interest within a month of buying.
I backed this on Kickstarter and have been following for a while. I am after a gadget to tinker with but still on the fence a little bit. It's about 300€ all in so I will see.
I wish we can have the low power Intel or AMD chip rather than ARM :( the distro fragmentation in ARM and my distaste for uboot makes me hard to press the buy button.
Strange to have this posted on Kickstarter and not on Crowdsupply or another open source hardware crowdfunding platform. But I suppose Kickstarter does have more reach.
Buyers beware: 4-core A53 is genuinely unusable (original Pinebook/PinePhone specs), A55 is better but I still wouldn’t recommend buying. You may expect performance similar to 15+ years old desktops.
For the IMX8MP - The pinephone was 1.2 GHz, this is 1.8 GHz on all four cores. As far as geekbench goes it hits between the Pi 3 and Pi 4, faster EMMC and LPDDR4 gives it a bigger boost compared to the Pi 3. The PCIe 3.0 is also there. Yes it is not equivalent to a desktop use, but for a phone sized usecases, the processor has not been a bottle neck. The advantage you get is a battery life that goes 7 hours on idle with the display on, and on sleep it can go upto 8D and wake up instantly.
The IMX95 is 6x A55 at 1.8GHz but you can check the geekbench below, it matches the single core performance of Pi 4 and beats it at multi-core performance while offering LPDDR5. But at the same time, is only 15% more power hungry than the 8MP.
I'll buy it when I see it working as a phone. Looks like phone support is an option here, but after I bought the pinePhone, I am wary it's not going to work.
I’m planning to build something like this over the next few months. Think Nintendo 3DS-sized, but as a tiny laptop. The goal is extreme portability while still being able to program on it reasonably well.
I travel a lot and manage servers, so I’ve been wanting a dedicated “SSH machine” that I can always carry with me. With how good AI tooling has gotten, doing real work on a tiny device is suddenly very viable. The other day I SSH’d into a box from my phone while I was at the gym and just told Claude Code to fix a Kubernetes manifest issue. It was fixed and deployed in under two minutes.
I mentioned this idea at work and a few coworkers immediately said they’d buy one if it existed. Curious what others think.
Any screenshots or videos of it running? All I'm seeing are renders. As someone who has been burned by crowdfunded "engineering" (where something seems good on paper, and then there's a year or two of posts about all the challenges that were "unforeseen" before a heartfelt postmortem) I feel like that's a requirement.
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[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 73.8 ms ] threadhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mecha-systems/mecha-com...
(and the super early bird rewards are all gone)
I might be interested if I weren't still waiting on the Soulcircuit Pilet to ship....
I want to want it but I fear it would just sit on my desk. Does anyone have cool ideas for uses?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonebloks
I have to say though: I like the communication of the Mecha Comet team here (and the UI). I wish them the best.
[1] https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/the-other-half-returns-commun...
They've got a grab-bag of unrelated Linux etc. org icons - Nix, Debian, postmarketOS, Node, Kubernetes… You could argue that someone _could_ run Nix or Node on it, but Debian is just nerdbait. It's not relevant to the product they're selling, unless you're gonna wipe the disk and support it yourself.
For the IMX8MP - The pinephone was 1.2 GHz, this is 1.8 GHz on all four cores. As far as geekbench goes it hits between the Pi 3 and Pi 4, faster EMMC and LPDDR4 gives it a bigger boost compared to the Pi 3. The PCIe 3.0 is also there. Yes it is not equivalent to a desktop use, but for a phone sized usecases, the processor has not been a bottle neck. The advantage you get is a battery life that goes 7 hours on idle with the display on, and on sleep it can go upto 8D and wake up instantly.
The IMX95 is 6x A55 at 1.8GHz but you can check the geekbench below, it matches the single core performance of Pi 4 and beats it at multi-core performance while offering LPDDR5. But at the same time, is only 15% more power hungry than the 8MP.
So the way we see it -
Pi 3 < Comet 8MP < Pi 4 < Comet 95 < Pi 5
Ref: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/15259040?baseli...
Edit: The IMX95 is 6-cores A55 and not 4-cores
interesting would be if i can put nixos onto it but keep using their launcher...
I travel a lot and manage servers, so I’ve been wanting a dedicated “SSH machine” that I can always carry with me. With how good AI tooling has gotten, doing real work on a tiny device is suddenly very viable. The other day I SSH’d into a box from my phone while I was at the gym and just told Claude Code to fix a Kubernetes manifest issue. It was fixed and deployed in under two minutes.
I mentioned this idea at work and a few coworkers immediately said they’d buy one if it existed. Curious what others think.
https://mecha.so/comet#hardware
https://mecha.so/comet#use-cases
Bunch more are incoming as do more tests, will add them in soon
A phone where I can install applications without asking Google for permission.