Comment by Aurornis
1 hour ago
Display connected to the microcontroller instead of the Linux SoC is an interesting choice
Actually, putting all of this powerful hardware into a custom aluminum enclosure with gorilla glass and then using a 6-bit low resolution grayscale display is a weird choice. I guess they were going for a certain grayscale low-fi vibe?
The "needs verification" and "needs clarification" lines are weird. Like they asked someone (or ChatGPT?) to review some docs and post something, but forgot to review it first.
> Display connected to the microcontroller instead of the Linux SoC is an interesting choice
There's a comment at the bottom about that. Quoting the response:
> From the Linux side, it's a standard framebuffer and keyboard that applications interact with as usual. However, our connection allows the MCU to intercept them and overlay additional content — for example, if the CPU hangs, we can still show a menu on the display and respond to button presses, say for a reboot. This also lets us have a low-power mode with the display still on.
Which sounds reasonable.
Re:choice of display, I'm betting it's for power saving. If you need a better display you can use the HDMI port or DisplayPort USB-C port and just hook it right up to a monitor/TV
I'm guessing it'll have a similar phone app to the Zero. I quite often use that, sometimes foe stealth so i can have the FZ in my pocket and look like I'm doomscrolling and not sniffing the airwaves, and sometimes just because almost 60 year old eyes have a better time using my phone screen instead of the tiny/grainy FZ one.
Most of the power in a display goes to the backlight. Going grayscale and low res wouldn't save much at the same level of backlight brightness.
The Flipper Zero's screen is transflective, I suspect this one is the same. While this technology is possible on larger color displays, it is more common to find these manufactured as small grey-scale screens. They're ideal for battery operated devices because of their low power requirements -- they are legible with the backlight entirely off as long as there is light in the room.
Remember these?:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81sQxjJBn1L._AC_.jpg
Grayscale displays have no subpixels (or just one, depends how you view it) which should allow for more light from the backlight to pass through compared to a color display, thus reducing energy needs for a given brightness.
It would if it was a transflective display.