A Phoenix link is almonst never the "original article." It barely contains half the info OP's link does.
ThrowawayR2 · 2026-10-27 23:11:52 UTC
The article literally says "Phoronix spotted it first" in its first paragraph and provides that link, so the parent poster is quite mistaken.
walrus01 · 2026-10-27 21:43:23 UTC
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 · 2026-10-27 22:02:22 UTC
Can confirm. Unfortunately. Even so this form factor is really nice and it's cheaper than an Arduino and far more powerful.
oynqr · 2026-10-27 22:14:16 UTC
Supporting WPA3 would be nice as well.
adgjlsfhk1 · 2026-10-28 00:09:15 UTC
Bluetooth 5.3 with LE audio would also be very nice.
jacquesm · 2026-10-27 22:01:14 UTC
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.
amatecha · 2026-10-27 22:06:02 UTC
Yeah I find the Pi's of that era have pretty poor wifi reception, has been a constant source of uncertainty when I run things on them sadly
jubilanti · 2026-10-27 22:20:39 UTC
I wouldn't hold out hope for an easier out of the box wifi antenna. If you want a U.FL antenna for the built-in wifi, there has to be a physical switch (cost, fragility) or a built-in antenna connected to U.FL you can replace (same issues) or the same cut and solder pattern for wifi antennas across chips like ESPs, nRFs, and others.
Just use a USB adapter with a decent antenna.
RicoElectrico · 2026-10-27 23:15:49 UTC
There are RF connectors by Hirose which are bypassable due to a built-in switch, but I don't think pigtails with them are common.
zokier · 2026-10-27 22:10:34 UTC
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
internet2000 · 2026-10-27 22:17:39 UTC
Decent support is not good enough. The Rasppi support is kind of an unsurmontable advantage.
qwerpy · 2026-10-27 22:28:48 UTC
Seems like a good use for AI. If people can use it to port video games from one system to another or jailbreak consoles, surely "get this library/program compiling on this device, then get all the tests passing, here's root ssh and an internet connection" could work pretty well in most cases. I wouldn't have bothered wasting my time in the past, but now, sure why not? It's not my time anymore and AI can turn the crank until it works.
jauntywundrkind · 2026-10-27 23:00:58 UTC
Largely agreed but very different problems between "works for me" and "ready for upstream/mainline".
I myself am guilty as hell of this, of carrying my own remixed software, juggling patches atop upstream, and feeling like getting it upstream would be far more work and labor (and ultimately like I don't really have the confidence to assert to upstream). Meanwhile upstream is screaming their heads off everywhere that they can't take it anymore, that they are not ok. It sucks that we have such amazing power, such competency, but our scaling & social functions aren't scaling into the godlike powers that are now on tap! Alas.
qwerpy · 2026-10-27 23:51:16 UTC
Yeah, agreed. I do the same. I only contribute smaller patches that definitely fix bugs, and not big vibe coded sprawls of code that happen to work for me but who knows what it breaks. For example I started using opengym which is definitely someone’s vibe code project and then grafted SSO on top for my own needs, but there’s no way I’d submit that upstream. That’s fine. I got what I wanted out of it. Things will adjust but for now just enjoy the ride :)
zokier · 2026-10-27 22:58:09 UTC
Rpi is not always such a gold standard either.. is their boot chain still a mess? That was one of the problems with zero 2w
jauntywundrkind · 2026-10-27 22:57:28 UTC
Yeah, I have a bunch of Radxa zero 3W, with their Rockchip rk3566. 4x A55 is just barely better than the A53 era still plaguing us 15 flipping years latter! Unbelievable. Alas just a hair before modern era of Rockchip, so it's support is much less consistent! But still pretty competent all in all!
Pine's Quartz64 has different peripherals attached but still afaik one of the best ways to track upstream support. It hasn't changed much since Linux 6.1 and I don't know if that's because there's nothing new or the page is just out of date. https://pine64.org/documentation/Quartz64/Development/
walrus01 · 2026-10-27 23:49:37 UTC
how close is the OS distribution for that to actual stock debian?
bArray · 2026-10-27 22:29:14 UTC
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.
dzhiurgis · 2026-10-28 00:06:10 UTC
That's what esp32's are for. $5 and uses fuck all power.
wolvoleo · 2026-10-27 22:37:18 UTC
I hope they'll finally bring usb-c to the zero. Badly needed
CPUHall · 2026-10-27 23:04:32 UTC
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 · 2026-10-27 23:58:28 UTC
Why a Pi 4 Model A and not a Pi 5? Perhaps because LPDDR4 is cheaper/more available than LPDDR4x?
esskay · 2026-10-28 00:11:40 UTC
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.
Comments
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.
Amazingly powerful hardware for the price these little things.
Just use a USB adapter with a decent antenna.
I myself am guilty as hell of this, of carrying my own remixed software, juggling patches atop upstream, and feeling like getting it upstream would be far more work and labor (and ultimately like I don't really have the confidence to assert to upstream). Meanwhile upstream is screaming their heads off everywhere that they can't take it anymore, that they are not ok. It sucks that we have such amazing power, such competency, but our scaling & social functions aren't scaling into the godlike powers that are now on tap! Alas.
Pine's Quartz64 has different peripherals attached but still afaik one of the best ways to track upstream support. It hasn't changed much since Linux 6.1 and I don't know if that's because there's nothing new or the page is just out of date. https://pine64.org/documentation/Quartz64/Development/