Flipper Zero is for the physical layer: radio, RFID, IR, etc... It is based on a small microcontroller and is mostly "bare metal", think Arduino, ESP32,...
Flipper One is for the network layer: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 5G, etc... It is a "real computer" running Linux, like a Raspberry Pi.
RFC 2321 suggests that they are "political and religious" layers. https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2321/
In this document we introduce a new hardware-based tool for diagnosis
and repair of network related hardware and software problems. This
tool is best suited to addressing nondeterministic problems such as
those described above. This tool has broad areas of application at
all levels of the OSI model; in addition to uses in the physical,
network, transport and application layers, it has been used to
successfully address problems at the political and religious layers
as well.I suppose the idea is it combines workflows you'd use a flipper zero + pc for into one device. Neat in idea, im not certain who it's truly for in practice. A flipper zero 2 with wifi built in and some minor improvements would have been much more welcome in my eyes.
but it broke too much and I found a better solution
The flipper was still a very nice thing to put in the pocket for along time for sure
Cardputer has a new pi zero variant coming out this month that runs full Linux, half GB Ram only, but should be fun nonetheless
Why Clones Underperform
Stable RFID requires accurate timing and tuned antennas for perfect coupling.
Cloned devices compete on price. Reducing the price means using lower-quality components (less precise, wider tolerance), which results in poor performance. Likewise, lowering testing standards means a cloning factory has fewer rejects - but customers receive devices of unproven stability and performance.https://blog.flipper.net/flipper-one-we-need-your-help/
The two devices are complementary.