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Mecha Comet - Modular Linux Handheld Computer (mecha.so)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] 27 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

This looks really neat, and it's awesome to see more open hardware! And the price seems pretty reasonable too for what you're getting, especially given this is a smaller company. The modular plates are also open, meaning you can design your own ones! It looks like it starts at 2GB / 64GB eMMC, and goes up to 8GB / 128GB. It has display out support too, and the super long software support (7 years) is very nice. The device is apparently repairable too, with spare parts to be easily available too! It's definitely a computer first, phone second, since LTE support is an optional upgrade, and there is no earpiece speaker (so calls will be very bothersome to others). It also supports M.2 SSDs, but it's in the more esoteric 3042 B-Key form factor (and an adapter for more standard 2230 SSDs will be another separate upgrade). If the Comet actually comes out and orders are fulfilled, I think this could be an awesome device!

I am moving to Piefed at scallisto@retrofed.com (https://retrofed.com/u/scallisto)

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  • [–] 14 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Hm. Looks cool! But... what's your usecase for it? Tiny Linux computer sounds cool, but I'm not totally sure what I would do with it. Maybe a music player?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    I'm not going to preorder it anytime soon, I would rather see (independent) reviews of a finished product first. ON their website, they note that it could be good for retro gaming (though that price for the chipset isn't great compared to the competition, but you get open hardware + modularity!), as a music player (audio jack!), and sysadmin / networking diagnostic stuff (where Linux is preferred over Android or iOS), but obviously there are better devices for each of those use cases. Few devices can do it all though, and you would be supporting open hardware and all that jazz. They also say that it could be useful for testing Linux mobile apps and that sort of stuff (since it's an ARM chip w/ optional LTE support), but won't be too good as a daily driver phone (no earpiece speaker, LTE being an optional upgrade).

    I probably won't get this, as I already have a computer (which does run Linux!) and smartphone and don't need/want another fun Linux device (my OnePlus 6 running postmarketOS fulfills that role already).

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    • [–] 20 points 3 weeks ago* (9 children)

    It's wild to me that 'enthusiast' devices in 2026 use 4gb of ram and 4xA53 or 6xA55 processors. Meanwhile similarly priced phones have 8gb ram, 2xA78+6xA55 processors, high refresh rate displays and all the other things a phone might have that this doesn't.

    I know that most big soc manufacturers don't have open firmwares, but this isn't even using a moderately powerful Rockchip soc.

    Such a weird thing that Apple keeps putting cutting edge top end processors in their simplest devices used by non-techy people while tech gadgets like this have old af low end processors

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  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago

    Difference in scale. Very common in new electronics.

    If you produce <10k units per year, you are in the "fuck you" category of customers where most companies won't even give you the time of day, much less data sheets under NDAs, design tools, or actual access to their chips at somewhat reasonable prices. Chips that are 5 years old are often fully open. This is especially egregious in the wearables space... (Not saying it is for this phone, per se)

    Also older chips use RAM that can actually still be bought because smartphone companies + AI bullshit haven't bought all of the stock for the next 2 years.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 weeks ago* (6 children)

    Other phone manufacturers get monies from phones other than the selling price (ad revenue, money from eg Facebook for preinstalling their app, revenue from their on-phone un-uninstallable stores, etc). Like printers or gaming consoles, the hardware is subsidised.

    (And ofc scale, that's a huge hurdle on it's own.)

    The price is kinda ok on this one.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

    It's not the libre hardware tax that bothers me, it's that there's no smartphone with specs this low released since 2022. What I think about when I hear 'handheld computer' isn't something weaker than a midrange phone from 2016.

    With these specs the company needs to explain why they aren't offering more powerful options imo.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (4 children)

    Is it that slower than the top 8-cores from 2016?

    8GB of RAM is also significantly more than the 2 or 3 a decade ago in top-of-the-line phones.

    Anyways, I doubt use cases for these wound use much CPU, imho if it's at like a Raspberry 5 level it's usable (does it also not have a good GPU?), and I'm glad it's not built around ESP32.

    With these specs the company needs to explain why they aren't offering more powerful options imo.

    Market prices, and all the Qualcomm chips are pre-hogged (and closed sauce). Actually there might not be many more powerful mobile chips out there.

    Literally libre hardware tax ;).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

    Oh didn't catch that there was amemory upgrade, that does make it better. The 4 core one should be 25-30% of 2016 flagship phone performance and 12% of rpi 5.

    I wonder if low powered x86 would be viable

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

    Where did you get those stats from?

    I only found this, lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

    Vs phones from geekbench scores of sd 410 vs sd 820, vs rpi from this page.

    Looking at them again it seems the a53 is clocked way below this device in both, my bad.

    Here's the correct comparson, vs sd 820 and sd 653.

    The 4 core part is 30-35% of sd 820 and 20-25% of the rpi 5 equivalent. The 6 core is 40% of sd 820 and 30% of rpi5 in single thread and 70% of sd 820 and 45% or rpi in multi thread.

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    • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago

    Waiting for the LTE to be available

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    [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    wow, if a later version of it can indeed do LoRa/Meshcore, it will be even more interesting to me.

    I wonder if it can run a Gnome desktop or phosh with all the stuff still possible available with the default installation.

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    • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago

    This looks like what the Motorola Z series could have been. Even the connector looks similar.

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    [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    Looks cool, but 500 nits is going to make the display hard to read in daylight.

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    [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    This looks really neat actually, and affordable.

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