I had similar feelings but the comments below about adding an SDR to it with an M.2 slot got me looking a little closer. This has an 8-core Rockchip A72/A53 processor and 8GB of RAM. This is not an incremental improvement over the Flipper Zero, this is something else entirely. Hmmmmm...
It's more like a portable Raspberry Pi with better efficiency and more IO. And hopefully even better mainline Linux support out of the gate.
The key question will be how much it costs. Beyond $250-300, it's a lot more of a niche product. Below $250 would be very interesting. I don't think it will be below $300. With current memory and storage pricing, probably $350-400 is more realistic :(
Does it need to be so cheap? With these specs it would make a decent replacement for a low end general purpose computer. The older NUC I use for a lot of stuff has similar-to-worse specs than this thing does.
If it’s not cheap, then what differentiates it from a $150 Linux laptop and $30 dongle
That's exactly my point! It's a low to midrange computer with extremely high portability including a grayscale display. Where else are you going to get that functionality combined as a single unit?
Its got 8gb of ddr5 in it. That's already a huge chunk of $300 - I'm not even sure they will get the BOM down to $300.
I'm guessing it'll be $1000 or so. (Which is good for me. Well above my impulse buy threshold. I don't regret buying my Flipper Zero, because it was within my impulse buy and not regret it threshold.)
I forgot it has a battery as well, so add on the extra power and charging circuitry. Yeah, probably north of $500, but I can't imagine it being closer to $1000 :/