Comment by parl_match
4 days ago
> which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players
the burning answer is really, by the time you've chosen a modern merchant soc, and put a screen on it, you're really more or less at the same BOM cost as a very low end android device (and frankly, the soc bsp you chose is likely to be android/aosp to begin with)
so you're basically competing head to head with every shitphone maker out there, and they have economies of scale. you do not.
> Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware
and so... now you're competing with simple smartphones. you're going to charge more for a fancy case for something that requires to be carried separate from your phone and offers zero additional advantage?
there's a huge market for external mobile DSPs for this reason. this is an example of an entry level one https://www.microcenter.com/product/705193/moondrop-freedsp-...
btw, im sure someone like shanling is making exactly what you're thinking of, but they often have limited production runs and still cost within the same range as a basic android phone (usually a bit more)
>the burning answer is really, by the time you've chosen a modern merchant soc, and put a screen on it, you're really more or less at the same BOM cost as a very low end android device (and frankly, the soc bsp you chose is likely to be android/aosp to begin with)
This is, incidentally, also almost universally an answer to "why doesn't nobody make a dumb TV anymore?!"
The off-the-shelf SoC that handle the TV decoding/HDMI bits already has a bunch of general purpose ARM cores; might as well put Android on it instead of writing your own firmware.
the race for margins has gotten so intense that actually, actively not scraping viewer data and using it for ad marketing means that even a non-spying smart tv is less economically feasible