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Comment by compressedgas | Hacker News Reader

Smartphones lack nearly all of the kinds of IO interfaces supported by a Raspberry Pi.

But you already have cameras, screen, GPS, magnetometer, WiFi, IMU. To equip a RPi with only a subset of those would add considerably to the cost.

You can even easily interface any Arduino for additional GPIOs via OTG and USB.

Exactly. The big thing that seems to have been forgotten about the Pi is all those exposed pins. It was designed that way, not just as a small computer.

FWIW, supporting 5W GPIO can be done entirely over USB power. The iPhone can do this, Apple just would really rather you not use their phone that way.

Yeah, I love the Pi for this reason, most upgrades are a matter of ordering the parts, like building a PC back in the day. Sometimes I look at my web server though (rpi 4), with its small size and touch screen already looking like a smartphone, and wondering if I could have just used an iPhone to host these sites & APIs on.

  iPhone 12
  Apple A14 Bionic @ 2.99 GHz
  1 Processor, 6 Cores
  5.60 GB

  Raspberry Pi 4
  ARM BCM2711 @ 1.50 GHz
  1 Processor, 4 Cores
  1.77 GB

I think iPhone always outperforms Raspberry Pi: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4581331?baselin...

Which makes sense since it was $1000 and the Pi was $35.

Old smartphones are often free, especially Android ones. I get mine from friends, family and of course my superseded units.

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