If you perform pentests or red teaming, a mobile device with CLI access is very useful (whether a smartphone is suffice I leave up to the reader). If you are using the device non-mobile, you could attach an external screen and keyboard to it (and perhaps pointer device, I like the Apple Magic Trackpad, even on Linux it works well these days). That way, you could for example write your pentest report on the machine while not fscking up your eyes. Also remember: if you got WLAN or 5G you can get access to more horsepower. It is not as if you were going to run hashcat on these devices locally. You can also run SSHd (and even remote desktop, I guess) on the machine and admin it like that from a fully blown computer. You could also use it with SDR, or for example for reverse engineering (which you could do in a VM as well, if you prefer).

Personally, I think this device would be pretty cool for a kid to learn Linux on (better than the Hackberry Pi CM5 which I got). The UI is neat, there's a CLI, and they can game on as well as explore on it. Pretty good deal a ~250 EUR machine to learn Linux on, as well as game. Remember: if it is ARM, it can run all the Android apps via Waydroid. No emulation or x86-64 Android versions necessary. I see it as a successor to Clockwork Pi GameShell [1] in that regard, as even the 2 GB RAM version is more powerful. That device had only 1 GB RAM, and:

> Introducing new Clockwork OS, based on Debian 9 ARMhf and Linux mainline Kernel 4.1x. You can run PICO 8, LOVE2D, PyGame, Phaser.io, Libretro, and many other game engines smoothly.

There's the Clockwork uConsole [2] as well, and you can put a RPi CM 3 or 4 in it. The A-04 variant specifically seems akin to the Mecha Comet i.MX 8 variant.

> A-04 ARM64-bit Quad-core Cortex-A53 1.8GHZ 4 Mali-T720 2GB DDR3

The RISC-V variant only has 1 GB RAM, the other variants got 4 GB DDR4.

Both the uConsole and the Mecha Comet are candybar format. Compared to Clockwork Pi's Devterm and GPD Pocket series which are clamshell. The Mecha Comet however allows you to easily swap the keyboard with a gamepad. The Clockwork devices don't allow this; they're tailored for either keyboard candybar, keyboard clamshell, or gamepad (candybar).

[1] https://www.clockworkpi.com/gameshell

[2] https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole

You might very well be right about the company, it is the likely outcome after all for all companies. But if the kernel support is seeded properly there should be a bit more time than predicted even then.

Also, positively: They did the communication on the website really well (I stumbled over the comet before), extended it nicely and the kickstarter campaign seems to be a big success. They have a good chance to stick around.

I can completely understand the skepticism, any startup today releasing something and promising to support will be taken with a grain of salt. I cannot guarantee that Mecha will not run out of business in 7 years. But at the very least we have the confidence to commit to 7 years of support, if we are able to keep the show going.

Why we are confident of extending this support -

1. The SOC from NXP is widely used in automotives and industries. Their support is listed till 2036, https://www.nxp.com/products/nxp-product-information/nxp-pro... which means their downstream will keep seeing updates. In above comment I mentioned that they follow 6 months+LTS release dates. To give an example, IMX6 that were released in 2011 are still actively supported in 2026. You can even buy SOMs and are still deployed in production.

2. The WiFi chip we are using is NXP IW612, again has longevity till 2038, which means it will still see its driver being updated and maintained.

3. Our audio codec is from Analog (MAX98090) again widely used and in production.

4. Most of our usb and power controllers are from TI, which can be expected to be around in the kernel for a long time.

5. None of the parts we've used are not recommended for new design or obsolete or come from unknown vendors. A lot of care has been taken in choosing the right parts?

From my point of view our work in supporting is to ensure we pull changes, run our test suites, see if everything works and repeat. What am I missing? There are no device drivers built that are exclusive to the Comet at this stage. You can review our device trees on our repos.

Also, we have a longer roadmap ahead of us - selling few thousand units in 5 days is no indicator of how things will be in the future. We are betting on this hardware and more hardware that we release later.

You can sit on the fence and keep expecting us to fail, that is your prerogative. But that doesn't automatically imply that we are ill-prepared.

(edit: formatting)

https://mecha.so/comet#software

We are currently testing with LTE modem (Quectel EM05). We are yet to test with 5G Modems but similar sized 3042 (M.2) are available albeit expensive.