It was only a couple of days ago that MagicX put out the announcement that the Mini Zero 28 would be discontinued due to the rapidly increasing cost of ram. At the same time as that announcement they decided they would announce a feasibility discussion for a new handheld: the MagicX Mini40. This was originally intended to be a $49 handheld with an RK3566, 1gb of ram, and a 4″ display. While nothing exciting, it was interesting to see them offer a larger alternative, if the community was interested. Well; apparently the 3566 wasn’t good enough for them, because they’re back with some new suggestions.
In the quite large announcement on the MagicX Discord Sean shared that the team was returning with two new options for the potential Mini40 that would be coming up. Rather than the Rockchip RK3566, they gave the options of both the RK3572, or the Allwinner A333 depending on if users felt they would be willing to spend $59 or $79 on the handheld rather than the original $49 offered with the RK3566. For further detail, the list of spec options are below.
The $79 Choice
・SoC: RK3572
・RAM: LPDDR4 2GB
・Display: 4-inch 800×480
・OS: Linux
・Dual speakers
・Dual SD card slots
・WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 5.1
・Vibration motor
The $59 Choice
・SoC: Allwinner A333
・RAM: DDR3 1GB / 1866MHz
・Display: 4-inch 800×480
・OS: Linux
・Dual speakers
・Dual SD card slots
・WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 5.1
・Vibration motor
The RK3572 is a decent bit more powerful than the A333 in benchmarks, but depending on community reception, they could go either way. Alongside that, the masters of handheld renders, offered up four color options in either Black, Orange, Translucent Green (Blue), and Translucent Magenta. While Personally I am a fan of the blue, Sean from the MagicX team has left two polls in their Discord for the community to decide on. A Purchase Intent Poll, to see which one users would buy, and a Launch Color Poll to decide which colors they should produce.
As always they’re noting this is a plan, and is still under review if they even produce it, but if you want to add your thoughts to the ring, be sure to join their discord and place your votes. Hopefully this set comes to fruition as both the Dream One and Two handhelds have basically been shelved, and the amount of discussion across other handhelds has just fallen through, leaving us with shattered dreams and nice renders. But if it does land, this could at the very least, be a decent sub-$100 option.
