(Credit: Flipper)
In 2020, the Flipper Zero became a phenomenon among hackers, tinkerers, and beginners seeking new ways to play with their household tech. Now, the enthusiast multi-tool computer is back for round two with the Flipper One.
The new lineup features advanced connectivity options on a device that maintains the brand's aesthetic and continues its goal of helping newbies experiment with its self-styled Swiss Army knife-like gadget.
PCMag’s Justyn Newman spent significant time with the Flipper Zero, finding he could program it to extract a pet’s microchip information from an RFID sensor, set up a PC resource manager, and make it work as an additional remote for gadgets around his home.
While the Zero was built for offline point-to-point access-control protocols, the Flipper One is for 5G, Ethernet, satellite, and Wi-Fi connectivity. There are two WAN/LAN ports running at 1Gbps, USB Ethernet support up to 5Gbps, and Wi-Fi 6E support, while additional modules provide 5G.
“It's all about networking, data transfer, and high-performance computing. Running on powerful hardware and an open Linux toolkit—enough computing power to handle SDR and local AI," Flipper CEO Pavel Zhovner writes in a blog post.
(Credit: Flipper)The Flipper One features a high-performance 8-core RK3576 SoC, a Mali-G52 GPU, and an NPU for running LLMs or other models locally. That’s all paired with 8GB of RAM, with the CPU running Linux OS. Meanwhile, a low-power microcontroller unit running Raspberry Pi with an RP2350 powers the display controls, touchpad, LED lights, and other aspects of the device.
Alongside the new hardware, Flipper is also opening up its development process by publishing all of its internal discussions, task trackers, debates, and more. Flipper calls this “all the messy stuff companies usually keep behind closed doors.”
The idea is to keep the process as open as possible through a public wiki called the Flipper One Developer Portal, and the option for anyone to join in and suggest new ideas.
Flipper has yet to share a release timeline, suggesting it may be a while before the One arrives. We also don’t know the price, but expect it to be higher than the Flipper Zero’s $199 price tag, given the advanced tech.
“There's a lot of uncertainty in this project, along with technical challenges and financial risks (like the current RAM chip crisis)," Zhovner notes in his blog post. "I don't know if we'll be able to do everything we've planned, but we'll give it everything we've got.”