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If a phone is thinner than 3.5mm, it's difficult to hold anyway.

According to hardware designers I've talked to, the thickness of the 3.5mm plug isn't the issue. The problem is its volume and placement. It consumes 240 mm^3 on an outer edge, on one end of the phone, which is incredibly valuable real estate in a modern phone, because that's pretty much where the antennas have to be -- and phones have a lot of antennas, because they have a lot of radios (e.g. LTE requires 8 radios, and most phones support 5+ bands, plus Wifi, bluetooth, GPSr and NFC). It's also where speakers have to be, and they also require some depth, so significant volume. And where the charging/data port has to be.

Sounds like you need to talk to better hardware designers.

Here is a 3.5 mm plug... and this is a large one.

Having taken apart a Nexus 5, the actual electronics (circuit board, radios, SOC) take up about 1/4 to 1/3 of the phone. The bulk of the internal space is consumed by the screen and the battery. As the GP alluded to, it's the pointless race to be thinner that's to blame, not the internal components.

(this is why I like articles like these, but he way, they might be "simple", but that means they're actually in reach of most of us here and so there's actually something meaningful to discuss).

I've built a few things professionally recently (some test kit) which are not all that much more than an RPi 3 in a box. I used these:

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/...

and some short USB cables internally for connection. They give a very solid, professional feel, and from my point of view, if a technician inexplicably whacks the connection with a hammer, then all I have to do is replace the bulkhead port, not anything more expensive inside. Not so important for home use, but they're still professional looking and robust. I believe that HDMI is available in the same series.

There's also quite a lot of other alternatives, and I expect you can get cheaper ones off aliexpress with all the usual caveats about variation in mileage.

They probably do panel mount micro USB connectors too, but you're better off sticking a proper IEC module on the box and having the PSU inside, becasue micro usb is utterly hateful in every possible way.

There are plenty of standard and less standard equipment boxes that'll fit all the necessary gubbins inside, or you can 3D print one, get the sides laser cut or craft it from fine hardwood if that's more your scene. Obviously, buying a ready made plastic box from a standard supplier is the easiest. I 3D printed mine since it had to be able to physically interface with an odd shaped piece of hardware.

If you don't actually take it diving, and apply a non-setting sealant compound to the groove before seating your replacement, you should get back to (approximately) IP66 or IP67, which is good for getting soaked through in driving rain, or possibly falling out of the boat with.

(Caveat : in the technician's workshop, we knew that these replacements were not to manufacturer's specs and kept a very tight rein on them as temporary repairs. At about the same time an oil rig in the area had a blowout (one dead (RO Tim Williams), some tens of millions of dollars damages ; the rig carcass went on to become the "SeaLaunch" system) due to a $100 o-ring being replaced with one of these kits. International arrest warrants are still outstanding, TTBOMK.)

Exactly. It totally misses the point of the pi. An x86 board with a pi-compatible layout and GPIO pins (and a sata port would be nice), for under $50 and you'd be in the territory of 'outcompeting the pi'. It is competing against stuff more like this: http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/...

Only an idiot would call flash STORAGE, memory. "memory" is not a nebulous term as you indicate.

And only an simpleton would call someone who refers to Flash MEMORY an idiot for not using the word "Storage".

If you look at this article, for example (picked because it was the first one that caught my eye), other than the first paragraph, the word "memory" appears a LOT more than the word "Storage".

And if you were to design Flash into a device (as I have), you will find that all the device datasheets (at least all the ones I have seen) refer to the components as "Flash MEMORY". For example, look at this typical electronics distributor page (again, picked entirely at random from a Google search for "flash memory chips"); note that everything from EEPROMs to large-scale Flash chips are referred to as "Flash MEMORY". Now, I notice that Samsung sometimes DOES refer to its Flash Memory as "Flash Storage"; but that is a recent thing, and if you peruse their websites, you will find that even they are inconsistent in their mixing of the terms "Memory" and "Storage". So, they are "idiots" too, I guess...

An idiot is someone who refers to a Hard Drive as "memory" (we've all seen that); but to call me an idiot because they use a different form of a term in which both are in common use says much more about your lack of experience and intelligence than it does mine.

Musch of the stuff I do is reflow, so I just place the oven by a nearby open window. My local hackspace has something like one of these:

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/...

it seems to work pretty well. You could also hook up a suction pump and heat resistant silicone tube to very near the tip. I've seen those rigs before but never used one.

UK
Australia

I routinely work with PC-like systems that go to 3km water depth (on Remote Operated Vehicles). I routinely work with systems that work in atmospheres where explosive gas compositions are present in normal operations (that's as severe if not more severe a problem then your "water jet" problem). The budget is everything.

The trivial answer to "a PC that can resist a water jet" is "buy an IP67 or IP68 junction box and build it in that. Ours cost about £5000 a piece, and another couple of thousand for the equipment to go inside, then 2 weeks of technician time to build everything, route the cables to the control switches. Then another couple of thousand for the testing to confirm gas tightness. Oh, and about £3000 for the purge gas control system. If you can do without the ExD / ExE certification, then you should be able to get some change out of ten thousand quid.

You're implying that the PC interacts with a human who is also exposed to the high-pressure water jet. Your health and safety risk analysis is likely to have flagged this as a point where you're really at risk of criminal charges if anything goes wrong and one of your employees gets hurt by the water jet, let alone it's interaction with the mains power in the PC.

If your human is elsewhere, or the interaction doesn't have to be highly direct, then it will be far and away simpler, and much cheaper, to move the PC out of the wet and hazardous zone, and into a secure cabinet somewhere. If you've got sensors / actuators that need short cables ... well, there are things you can do about that. I've spent the thick end of thirty years going out to oil rigs at irregular intervals (irregular now, more often in the past when I'd double up as an installation technician ; small company, the technician department is 2-fold bigger now than the entire company was when I joined) to install complex arrays of sensors with VGA-SVGA displays at remote locations on the rig, sometimes in flammable gas areas, other times in safe areas. Kilometre-length cable runs are nothing unusual, when you see the routing you have to take through the maze of cable trays, transits and moving parts. With such a sketchy description, I'm really quite that you actually need to solve this "waterproof PC" problem, instead of the much simpler problem of how to connect a PC to a waterproof keyboard / touchscreen/ display / sensors unit. The problems of cabling in such areas have been solved decades ago.

You probably need to speak to someone who is a currently-ticketed instrument technician. From when I was doing this stuff regularly, I'd know there were some situations where I'd have to use these instead of these (and, of course, vice versae). But if I were working on equipment that was to be inspected by a different (foreign, American) inspection agency, neither would be acceptable and we'd have to re-gland everything. It's a minefield!

The cheap and nasty answer is to build the computer into one of these, appropriately glanded, and the display into another one, also appropriately glanded. Then put each unit into one of these , again, appropriately glanded. The outer case will be able to protect the inner case to survive the water pressures you're talking about. Won't cost much more than £1000, plus glanding. Take a day or so to put together (that's what - £400 technician time?). Not pretty. Effective.

I routinely work with PC-like systems that go to 3km water depth (on Remote Operated Vehicles). I routinely work with systems that work in atmospheres where explosive gas compositions are present in normal operations (that's as severe if not more severe a problem then your "water jet" problem). The budget is everything.

The trivial answer to "a PC that can resist a water jet" is "buy an IP67 or IP68 junction box and build it in that. Ours cost about £5000 a piece, and another couple of thousand for the equipment to go inside, then 2 weeks of technician time to build everything, route the cables to the control switches. Then another couple of thousand for the testing to confirm gas tightness. Oh, and about £3000 for the purge gas control system. If you can do without the ExD / ExE certification, then you should be able to get some change out of ten thousand quid.

You're implying that the PC interacts with a human who is also exposed to the high-pressure water jet. Your health and safety risk analysis is likely to have flagged this as a point where you're really at risk of criminal charges if anything goes wrong and one of your employees gets hurt by the water jet, let alone it's interaction with the mains power in the PC.

If your human is elsewhere, or the interaction doesn't have to be highly direct, then it will be far and away simpler, and much cheaper, to move the PC out of the wet and hazardous zone, and into a secure cabinet somewhere. If you've got sensors / actuators that need short cables ... well, there are things you can do about that. I've spent the thick end of thirty years going out to oil rigs at irregular intervals (irregular now, more often in the past when I'd double up as an installation technician ; small company, the technician department is 2-fold bigger now than the entire company was when I joined) to install complex arrays of sensors with VGA-SVGA displays at remote locations on the rig, sometimes in flammable gas areas, other times in safe areas. Kilometre-length cable runs are nothing unusual, when you see the routing you have to take through the maze of cable trays, transits and moving parts. With such a sketchy description, I'm really quite that you actually need to solve this "waterproof PC" problem, instead of the much simpler problem of how to connect a PC to a waterproof keyboard / touchscreen/ display / sensors unit. The problems of cabling in such areas have been solved decades ago.

You probably need to speak to someone who is a currently-ticketed instrument technician. From when I was doing this stuff regularly, I'd know there were some situations where I'd have to use these instead of these (and, of course, vice versae). But if I were working on equipment that was to be inspected by a different (foreign, American) inspection agency, neither would be acceptable and we'd have to re-gland everything. It's a minefield!

The cheap and nasty answer is to build the computer into one of these, appropriately glanded, and the display into another one, also appropriately glanded. Then put each unit into one of these , again, appropriately glanded. The outer case will be able to protect the inner case to survive the water pressures you're talking about. Won't cost much more than £1000, plus glanding. Take a day or so to put together (that's what - £400 technician time?). Not pretty. Effective.

I routinely work with PC-like systems that go to 3km water depth (on Remote Operated Vehicles). I routinely work with systems that work in atmospheres where explosive gas compositions are present in normal operations (that's as severe if not more severe a problem then your "water jet" problem). The budget is everything.

The trivial answer to "a PC that can resist a water jet" is "buy an IP67 or IP68 junction box and build it in that. Ours cost about £5000 a piece, and another couple of thousand for the equipment to go inside, then 2 weeks of technician time to build everything, route the cables to the control switches. Then another couple of thousand for the testing to confirm gas tightness. Oh, and about £3000 for the purge gas control system. If you can do without the ExD / ExE certification, then you should be able to get some change out of ten thousand quid.

You're implying that the PC interacts with a human who is also exposed to the high-pressure water jet. Your health and safety risk analysis is likely to have flagged this as a point where you're really at risk of criminal charges if anything goes wrong and one of your employees gets hurt by the water jet, let alone it's interaction with the mains power in the PC.

If your human is elsewhere, or the interaction doesn't have to be highly direct, then it will be far and away simpler, and much cheaper, to move the PC out of the wet and hazardous zone, and into a secure cabinet somewhere. If you've got sensors / actuators that need short cables ... well, there are things you can do about that. I've spent the thick end of thirty years going out to oil rigs at irregular intervals (irregular now, more often in the past when I'd double up as an installation technician ; small company, the technician department is 2-fold bigger now than the entire company was when I joined) to install complex arrays of sensors with VGA-SVGA displays at remote locations on the rig, sometimes in flammable gas areas, other times in safe areas. Kilometre-length cable runs are nothing unusual, when you see the routing you have to take through the maze of cable trays, transits and moving parts. With such a sketchy description, I'm really quite that you actually need to solve this "waterproof PC" problem, instead of the much simpler problem of how to connect a PC to a waterproof keyboard / touchscreen/ display / sensors unit. The problems of cabling in such areas have been solved decades ago.

You probably need to speak to someone who is a currently-ticketed instrument technician. From when I was doing this stuff regularly, I'd know there were some situations where I'd have to use these instead of these (and, of course, vice versae). But if I were working on equipment that was to be inspected by a different (foreign, American) inspection agency, neither would be acceptable and we'd have to re-gland everything. It's a minefield!

The cheap and nasty answer is to build the computer into one of these, appropriately glanded, and the display into another one, also appropriately glanded. Then put each unit into one of these , again, appropriately glanded. The outer case will be able to protect the inner case to survive the water pressures you're talking about. Won't cost much more than £1000, plus glanding. Take a day or so to put together (that's what - £400 technician time?). Not pretty. Effective.

I routinely work with PC-like systems that go to 3km water depth (on Remote Operated Vehicles). I routinely work with systems that work in atmospheres where explosive gas compositions are present in normal operations (that's as severe if not more severe a problem then your "water jet" problem). The budget is everything.

The trivial answer to "a PC that can resist a water jet" is "buy an IP67 or IP68 junction box and build it in that. Ours cost about £5000 a piece, and another couple of thousand for the equipment to go inside, then 2 weeks of technician time to build everything, route the cables to the control switches. Then another couple of thousand for the testing to confirm gas tightness. Oh, and about £3000 for the purge gas control system. If you can do without the ExD / ExE certification, then you should be able to get some change out of ten thousand quid.

You're implying that the PC interacts with a human who is also exposed to the high-pressure water jet. Your health and safety risk analysis is likely to have flagged this as a point where you're really at risk of criminal charges if anything goes wrong and one of your employees gets hurt by the water jet, let alone it's interaction with the mains power in the PC.

If your human is elsewhere, or the interaction doesn't have to be highly direct, then it will be far and away simpler, and much cheaper, to move the PC out of the wet and hazardous zone, and into a secure cabinet somewhere. If you've got sensors / actuators that need short cables ... well, there are things you can do about that. I've spent the thick end of thirty years going out to oil rigs at irregular intervals (irregular now, more often in the past when I'd double up as an installation technician ; small company, the technician department is 2-fold bigger now than the entire company was when I joined) to install complex arrays of sensors with VGA-SVGA displays at remote locations on the rig, sometimes in flammable gas areas, other times in safe areas. Kilometre-length cable runs are nothing unusual, when you see the routing you have to take through the maze of cable trays, transits and moving parts. With such a sketchy description, I'm really quite that you actually need to solve this "waterproof PC" problem, instead of the much simpler problem of how to connect a PC to a waterproof keyboard / touchscreen/ display / sensors unit. The problems of cabling in such areas have been solved decades ago.

You probably need to speak to someone who is a currently-ticketed instrument technician. From when I was doing this stuff regularly, I'd know there were some situations where I'd have to use these instead of these (and, of course, vice versae). But if I were working on equipment that was to be inspected by a different (foreign, American) inspection agency, neither would be acceptable and we'd have to re-gland everything. It's a minefield!

The cheap and nasty answer is to build the computer into one of these, appropriately glanded, and the display into another one, also appropriately glanded. Then put each unit into one of these , again, appropriately glanded. The outer case will be able to protect the inner case to survive the water pressures you're talking about. Won't cost much more than £1000, plus glanding. Take a day or so to put together (that's what - £400 technician time?). Not pretty. Effective.

They don't have a store, you can buy it from farnell, CPC(who are farnell but friendlier), RS, Allied electronics(whoever they are), NewIT(who i got mine from) and Maplin

If there isn't a single option there that offers it for less that 70 EUR with tax and shipping, i'll be a little surprised.
Charging 13 EUR for a pre-loaded SD card doesn't seem that awful, especially considering that they(the foundation, who aren't the ones selling the cards) provide you with all the tools and instructions to make your own bootable SD cards, no one's forcing you to do anything here.

check their FAQs http://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi&file=questions&cm_mmc=uk-email-_-other-_-uk-250912-raspberry_pi_delay-_-0 .

Agreed, it was a predictable clusterF$%k from the start. I suspect this "hiccup" was planned and the 10000 batch was never made. They waited till they had 100K orders so they could meet their price point. The problem is it seems to be lie to cover up a lie a lot of times.

The FAQ on RS Components site seems to indicate they never had 5000 units like the foundation said they did:

Q - Do you actually have any Raspberry Pi in stock? And how do we order them? I can only get a Register Your Interest page?

A - Along with the other supplier of Raspberry Pi, we are expecting our first shipment of boards towards the end of March.

RS Components

The story at launch from the Pi guys was they were in stock and were shipping as early as March 12.

And the fact you can be banned for simply stating a "contrary" viewpoint tells me enough about them.

And one more thing while I'm on a rant... how can they produce them for $35 when the cheapest ARM clones and even the Arduino's are $30. It makes no sense even if they have a deal on the CPU's.

If you buy yourself a couple of industrial ducts (the "open slot" version) you end up with a sort of long box (they come in 2 and 3 meter lengths where I buy them). Take the lid off, run cables in and out at the places they need to go and put the lid back on - ready.

The nice thing is that it allows you to change your mind later, and they have a near eternal life.

Example: see RS Components online.