Orange Pi Neo Coming as a Ryzen 7 and Linux Powered Handheld Device

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Orange-Pi-Neo-Console

by ahloiscreamo • 2 years ago

122 84 2 years ago

phoronix.com

mkl2• 2 years ago

Probably a better link, with a lot of specs: https://neo.manjaro.org/

Another article: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/handheld-gaming/ora...

gbil2• 2 years ago

No mention on repairability and that resolution is too high for the screen size and processing power I'm afraid. I wonder what the price will be therefore

poglet• 2 years ago

In case, someone didn’t see:

7-inch FHD+ (1920 x 1200, WUXGA) 16:10, 500nits Brightness, 120Hz Refresh Rate

bryanlarsen2• 2 years ago

Modern GPUs are fabulous at upscaling. A too-high res screen is not the same bottleneck it used to be.

out_of_protocol2• 2 years ago

fabulous - only DLSS, Nvidia only. And at a cost - it requires a lot of transistors and some energy to power it

pquki4• 2 years ago

7840U, 1920x1200 on 50Wh battery, guess what, that's almost exactly the same as a ThinkPad T14 gen 4 (and many other devices)

The screen resolution is high compared to steam deck for sure, but about the same as 7" ROG Ally (1200p vs 1080p), and dpi is slightly lower than Legion Go. Remember that your 6.3 inch phone, also a handheld device, probably has a higher DPI than this.

gbil2• 2 years ago

we've seen already how the rog ally with a similar (very similar) chip performs and here they bundle it with a higher resolution display @120Hz. What is the point of it if you can't drive this ? Just for winning on the specs ? maybe but then is nothing more than marketing and we don't even have the price yet

I also don't understand the phone comparison, this is a gaming handheld, very specific purpose compared to an all-rounder device. Please elaborate

dotnet00• 2 years ago

The "too high resolution" point is in terms of gaming performance. A phone has a much higher DPI screen, but it also isn't expected to run PC games which haven't been optimized for the limitations of handheld devices.

nisegami• 2 years ago

Just some thoughts:

- no word on pricing or availability, which are the most important pieces of information

- resolution is in a weird spot where it's too high to drive most games at native res and potentially too low to look good at 2x integer scaling

- screen is 120Hz and has "500nits Brightness", but is not OLED

- having trackpads make this usable in more contexts than gaming (from my experience with the deck), but they could end up being trash

- I haven't had the chance to use either hall effect triggers or sticks, but I am curious on how they pan out

- advertising "no exposed screws" is mad suspicious to me, and casts doubt on reparability

- dual usc-b ports (top and bottom) is always great to see

WhereIsTheTruth2• 2 years ago

Glad to see Linux as THE platform for handheld PC gaming and emulation

mkl2• 2 years ago

A platform. Asus ROG Ally runs Windows, as do a few others.

Narishma• 2 years ago

As far as I know, only this and the Steam Deck use Linux. Every other handheld gaming PC uses Windows.

WhereIsTheTruth2• 2 years ago

A PC is not bound to an OS

When i say "the platform", i meant it offer the optimal setup for the use-case

- better UX

- better performance

- better battery life

Besides, the one that sells the most is the Steam Deck, wich run a Linux OS

A Handheld gaming device is not a novel concept, countless of devices running both android / linux in the market

Example:

- https://anbernic.com/collections/linux

- https://www.goretroid.com/

xinayder• 2 years ago

Biggest red flag is Manjaro rather than any other distro. But it remains to be seen whether it will be a Steam Deck killer or not.

Schinken_• 2 years ago

I feel like Manjaro is approaching some hardware companies and offering some sort of patnership.

Minisforum is also exclusively(?) marketing Manjaro for their MiniPCs (besides Windows of course).

exceptione3• 2 years ago

I think they have build up a large userbase over the years. It is pretty beginner friendly imho. The upside of it being arch based is that your favourite package is not years old. For a desktop os a rolling release where every imaginable package can be found in either the official repo or in aur is a huge plus.

Endeavouros came later, when Manjaro was already large and established. It has a more sane approach than Manjaro wrt package mgmt. But by not including a *graphical* package manager they are not an option for beginners. This is possibly meant to prevent success at any cost, I dunno.

Etheryte• 2 years ago

No exposed screws on the body

This is phrased like a feature, but it's absolutely not. Why would anyone want this when the Steam Deck is super easy to repair and has a lot of spare part options?

squarefoot2• 2 years ago

Gamers. But having now two major Linux gaming devices means competition which is always good from the consumer side.

bjord2• 2 years ago

you'd actually be surprised how much competition there seems to be in the chinese SBC gaming space

it's mostly emulation, though (see https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/)

ensignavenger3• 2 years ago

Asus and Lenovo both make a handheld gaming device that competes with the Steamdeck now. Though the Orange Pi Neo looks like an interesting entrant. Manjaro is pretty similar to the Steamdeck OS, which Valve has failed to release for other hardware (they said they were going to). In fact, Manjaro is what Valve recommends to developers looking to test their games ona "steamdeck like" OS if they don't have a Steamdeck.

pjmlp4• 2 years ago

For playing Windows games, mostly.

giantg22• 2 years ago

These aren't mutually exclusive. My phone doesn't have exposed screws, but it's relatively easy to pop off the back cover and access them.

prmoustache3• 2 years ago

It is usually ok for the first repair but having replaced 3 times the screen of my significant other (!) the plastic casing tabs do not like repeated access.

Even worse if the stuff is not documented correctly you can break those plastic tabs by mistake. I did so when I converted my vintage polaroid camera to battery-less I-type films.

_chu1• 2 years ago

How old is your phone to have a back cover?

newsclues2• 2 years ago

I don’t want a handheld I want an open console with replaceable sbcs.

prmoustache3• 2 years ago

That is called a computer.

_0ffh2• 2 years ago

Right, the principal advantage and differentiator of a console is the practically immutable hardware configuration. If you take that away, what defines it then?

newsclues2• 2 years ago

Everything can be called a computer, I want a specific type of computer. Open, commodity, appliances. It’s hard to get all three!

feverzsj3• 2 years ago

Dimensions 259mm107mm19.9mm

Anything larger than Switch Lite shouldn't call themselves "handled".

IsTom2• 2 years ago

I suppose OLED switch is not a handheld then.

feverzsj3• 2 years ago

They never call it handled. It's a portable console.

DrNosferatu• 2 years ago

Price?

pjmlp4• 2 years ago

This would be great if native GNU/Linux games would be promoted, instead I suspect it will be used for emulators (consoles, retrogaming, and Windows) instead, like every Linux based handheld since Pandora.

gamjQZnHT53AMa• 2 years ago

Eh, in my opinion we are in a time where Proton is allowing people use linux as a full time gaming platform, and if linux adoption around gaming grows because of this, eventually native linux games will follow become emphasized.

happymellon• 2 years ago

How did that work out for OS/2?

I understand his is completely different. For starters the interface being able to completely avoid the standard desktop is awesome, which Windows doesn't seem to be able to.

Secondly I get better performance with Linux and Proton on the same hardware.

packetlost• 2 years ago

native GNU/Linux games

all 12 of them? I would give up on hopes of there being any serious market interest for Linux native games any time soon, if ever. Proton/WINE is good enough and the industry does. not. care. about targeting a platform with a rounding error number of users. The best thing to happen to Linux gaming in the last 10 years was the Steam Deck, and that alone is more or less driving adoption.

There are several orders of magnitude more people playing on Unix/BSD derivatives than there are playing on Linux unless you count Android.

pjmlp4• 2 years ago

It did wonders for OS/2.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

It’s in the name!

pjmlp4• 2 years ago

It still boils down to running Windows games, regardless of how it is done.

k8svet2• 2 years ago

Nothing kills my interest faster than seeing Manjaro. What a bad choice of distro, for users, and/or as a partner. To me, it shows they don't get it. SBCs can be such a nightmare.

pas2• 2 years ago

what's wrong with Manjaro?

arcanemachiner• 2 years ago

https://github.com/arindas/manjarno

Levitating4• 2 years ago

The developers are incompetent.

In general it's better to just stick with a distribution with a large userbase and developer community. Something stable that has proven itself over the years.

With Manjaro you are basically using ArchLinux with its many developers and contributors, except that a few extra developers are messing with the packages and delay the updates. Whenever you encounter a bug in Manjaro, you don't know if it's from the source, introduced by Manjaro or an issue with ArchLinux. You can't rely on the ArchLinux wiki and the ArchLinux forums or irc will refuse to help you. And the Manjaro developers have outright said in their forums that they are not responsible for users having a broken system after an upgrade.

It's just a waste of everyones time.

exceptione3• 2 years ago

Then you switch to any other Arch flavor?

matheusmoreira• 2 years ago

What is it about Manjaro anyway that makes these corporations adopt it? I don't get it. I remember at least one Linux phone burned a ton of community good will by adopting Manjaro.

k8svet2• 2 years ago

Yes, I had them in mind. I have to check my own biases because I think [my distro] is of course better suited and more mature, but I really don't get it.

I personally think the community management, and XDA-forum-esque development ecosystem really ties into the conditions leading to the "crisis" that affected a certain first gen SBC/phone device.

I'm absolutely convinced that the first SBC manufacture that embraces tow-boot/nixos is going to find themselves with a dedicated, loud fanbase. NixOS or Guix on these stupid SBCs is end-game. Whether it's vendor BSP or upstream, it's trivial to share work and share output images. And, it makes it trivial to side-by-side vendor+mainline configurations, thereby further putting pressure on the SBC manufacturers to actually upstream their work or contract Collabora to do so (see: rock5b).

burningChrome2• 2 years ago

I'm interested to know why it seems easy to build a Linux gaming device, but their attempts at getting a smartphone to market has been laden with problems, delays and never really getting anything decent to market.

Am I being naïve to think building a hand held gaming device should be similar to building a smartphone?

herbst• 2 years ago

It's just a Linux running Steam UI. A phone needs so much more these days to be seen as competition. Ubuntu phone was beautiful and worked nicely, but without any ecosystem it felt boring and like a downgrade.

coffeebeqn• 2 years ago

It’s basically a small laptop right. Much simpler than to build a modern smart phone

devmor2• 2 years ago

The software ecosystem.

Gaming devices are easy because games are mostly just self contained executable that may rely on some OS library that can be freely pulled in (thank you WINE/Proton).

Smartphones use "Apps" which are tightly bound to APIs provided by the host OS and for the most part, would need to be fully emulated. Most apps also have in-app purchasing, which relies on secure hardware APIs that are specifically designed to detect emulation and fail out.

You would need a linux phone app ecosystem, and developers building popular apps for it, for linux phones to take off.

burningChrome2• 2 years ago

> You would need a linux phone app ecosystem, and developers building popular apps for it, for linux phones to take off.

I believe this is the same thing that sank the Windows Mobile platform and their phones. They had everything BUT the ecosystem which made a lot of users hesitant to switch because a lot of their apps weren't available in the MS app store.

Thanks for the clarification, it helped iron out a lot of my questions.

mdaniel• 2 years ago

Orange Pi
AMD Ryzen

I guess that "Pi" branding has come to mean ... small computing of any kind now? Or maybe I'm just out of the branding loop and "Orange" is more meaningful than Pi and thus they should have just omitted the "Pi" part

meatmanek• 2 years ago

It's pretty common for a company to adopt their first product's name as their brand name as they branch out into other products. Just like how Raspberry Pi sells accessories, microcontrollers, cases, etc. under the brand name Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi (which originally made a product called the Orange Pi, which was definitely meant to invoke the small computing idea, totally not a trademark violation wink wink), now makes other products under that brand name.

(I'm still a little miffed that RPi didn't come up with a different name for the raspberry pi pico.)

Orange Pi Neo Coming as a Ryzen 7 and Linux Powered Handheld Device

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