Raspberry Pi Zero 3W and Pi 4 Model A spotted in device trees

ThrowawayR2

Original source article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Raspberry-Pi-Zero-3-W-Pi-4-A

walrus01

The biggest thing I want to see in a zero 3 w is not better cpu or ram, but wifi that isn't the zero 2 w spec of "2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN" Having at least 1x1 802.11ac that's capable of working in the 5050 to 5900 MHz band will be a huge feature improvement. Such as to connect to a 'modern' AP running in an 80 MHz channel. There's tons of environments where 2.4 GHz is a CSMA hell of noise and the performance in a single 20 MHz channel will always be crap, and ranges/real world distances between AP and pi will be very limited because of the extreme noise in the 2.4 band.

jacquesm

I'm using the 2 W for a project and one thing I would love is for a better wifi antenna, the one that's on the 2 just isn't good enough. You can hack it though, there is a spot on the board where you can solder on a connector, cut a single trace and you're good to go. But it would be great if it would do better out of the box. Amazingly powerful hardware for the price these little things.

zokier

there is radxa zero 3w, which on paper is nice looking board. bit dated maybe but still lot fresher than pi zero 2w. the rockchip soc should have decent mainline support and it has been around for a while

bArray

I really hope they can keep the cost down, it needs to be in the "it's so cheap just hack on it" price range for not just engineers but kids too. I'm excited to see low-cost hardware put in the hands of kids with LLMs in their sails.

wolvoleo

I hope they'll finally bring usb-c to the zero. Badly needed

CPUHall

If only they'd keep the prices low and availability there. Things have been pretty bad since they've started moving out of the consumer market target.

kristianp

Why a Pi 4 Model A and not a Pi 5? Perhaps because LPDDR4 is cheaper/more available than LPDDR4x?

esskay

It's hard to get too excited about anything coming from Raspberry Pi these days. Their anti consumer moves, weird accusatory social media positioning and obscene pricing just makes it all feel a bit like their relationship with B2C has gone very sour.

asadm

Better be $10-$15 to be of any use. There are MANY much better offerings now. Rockchip/Allwinner etc.

lunatuna

The Pi zero is dead to me. Price might be one thing but lack of availability makes it useless. I like running Merves on it but will move to AtomVM and Esp32 where I can.

throwaway81523

I don't see the need for an even more powerful Pi Zero. I'd say just have a modernized version of the original $5 single core Pi Zero, or ok the wireless version was good too. Maybe even have a 128MB config (original one was 512MB before the DRAM shortage) to keep the price down. Model A same same, who needs it if it's not a lot cheaper than the B. I do like the Pico series and it would be cool to have one of those with memory protection.

dofm

If the Zero 3W has USB-C gadget mode support, a gigabyte of RAM and the Pi 4 chip, it’s going to sell very well indeed.

Beached

I still havent been able to buy a Pi zero 2w from anywhere that isnt scalper prices. Zero is DOA if they cant actually manufacture them enough to get them into peoples hands.

zahlman

Could we get one that has Ethernet only and no wireless connectivity? I am so sick and tired of the entire concept of "IOT".

404mm

I only have one wish for the Zero 3 W: 1GB RAM. I’m not even asking for more.

jongjong

It's kind of insane how the higher end Raspberry PIs are almost as powerful as my PC tower. The price is quite low and developer friendly too. Really great products. The lower end products are awesome too. It's one of the few products I look at with awe and which makes me feel good about the tech industry. I managed to build a WiFi temperature sensor (which can be substituted with any analog sensor) which streams its data to a web platform (I also built), encrypted over HTTPS (with CA certificate verification), using a $10 Raspberry PI Pico W; built in a single weekend. I can connect it to my phone's WiFi hotspot from anywhere and stream data to my web platform where it displays a realtime chart. $10.

edg5000

The CM4 and Pi 4 use the Cypress CYW43455 for Wi-FI, which I found to be unreliable. Under load, it crashes, and it can't be fixed in the kernel. Frustratingly, many other SoMs and SBCs use this chip. I don't understand why there is no recall on this - in my opinion - trash product. It's an odd feeling to be the only one experiencing this. I am 100% confident this is a design flaw in the CYW43455. I've seen this also on a Pine64 CM4 compatible SoM, which has a completely different SoC. This is on both the official and custom carrier. Cypress, fix your shit!