$69 PhoenixA20 Pico-ITX Board Features Allwinner A20 SoC

Anichips Technology, a Shenzhen based electronics design company, has just announced PhoenixA20, a pico-ITX board features AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A20 SoC with 1GB, 4GB Flash, HDMI and VGA output, Ethernet, and built-in Wi-fi and Bluetooth.
PhoenixA20

PhoenixA20 specifications:

  • SoC- AllWinner A20 dual ARM Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU
  • System Memory – 1GB DDR3
  • Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, micro SD card slot (up to 32GB), and SATA
  • Video output – HDMI and VGA connectors. LVDS, RGB and CVBS signals are accessible via the expansion headers
  • Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth 4.0 (via AP6210)
  • USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports
  • Camera Interface – CSI
  • Expansion headers – 3x UART, 2x I2C, 1×I2S, 1xCVBS, 4x TVIN, 2x Line IN,  1x SPDIF, 2x PWM, 2x LRADC, 2x FMIN, 1xHeadphone, 4xTVOUT, MIC, IR, TP

The board supports Android 4.2.2, and Linux 3.3 with source code for Linux, Android, and U-boot available from the company’s github account. Documentation and schematics (PDF format) are also available. There are two directory for English and Chinese documentation, but at the moment don’t bother with the English version (basically empty), and all interesting docs are in the Chinese directory. There’s also a Wiki (short but in English, and with somewhat useful links), and a forum, in Chinese only for now, which could be the place where to find bootable Ubuntu or Android images for the board.

It’s one of the rare boards to come with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in this price category ($69 including shipping), as well as a CSI connector (although it’s unclear if any cam is supported right now). The VGA output may be an advantage too. In theory, you should be able to purchase pico-ITX case for the board, but as noted on linux-sunix mailing list, there are not that many off-the-shelf Pico-ITX cases, so this may not be that much of an advantage.

The board can be purchased on Aliexpress for $69 including shipping via China Post, or on Taobao for 369 CNY (~ $60.50).

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27 Comments
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adem
adem
10 years ago

would this make a good xbmc player and with linux would it have full hw acceleration

Pete
Pete
10 years ago

but how this board works? can I install on a lunux arm distribution without pain? what distribution?

agumonkey
10 years ago

Near identical specs to cubieboard2. Competition.

uneofus
uneofus
10 years ago

Don’t try to cheat us with that “1.2Ghz”: faster than 912Mhz, A20 start to melt down!

xxiao
xxiao
10 years ago

I think the price is $59 instead of $69?
anyway this seems a better deal comparing to cubieboard2. cuibeboard2 is slightly more expensive(5%), and it does not have CSI-camera, VGA and wifi/BT _onboard_.

rasz_pl
rasz_pl
10 years ago

Cubietruck with less ram
and knowing chinese fly by night dev houses consisting of 3 students even less code support

agumonkey
10 years ago

@uneofus
Really ? any sources ?

Hedda
Hedda
10 years ago

Allwinner A10, A13, and A20 are not any good for XBMC yet, and still does not look promising since it has gone a year now without A10 support even though it is a very cheap and popular platform. Allwinner A10, A13, and A20 SoC’s all uses the same type of CedarX (CedarV VPU and CedarA APU via libve) for hardware accelerated video and audio decoding. But if you are a developer and you managed to get the CedarX Video Processor Unit working on A10 then it should also work on A20, and vice verse. Otherwise you just have to continue… Read more »

bdj
bdj
10 years ago

@Hedda
Not gonna happen. Allwinner has been around for a while now and if they were going to release anything they would have done so.

XBMC was in talks with Allwinner and said they would support XBMC devs with code but they bailed on XBMC.

Do not expect any support from Allwinner for any type of code/drivers/libraries.

I thought Tom Cubie was an Allwinner employee? If he can’t get any support from allwinner do you think anyone else can….

Jim Spegal
Jim Spegal
10 years ago

What is the operating temperature range of this board?

VP
VP
10 years ago

On Aliexpress it is now $59 without shipping. I ordered one board just after this blog post was published including free shipping by China Mail. Shop sent me email and said that it doesn’t have free shipping. After few emails I got free shipping to Finland by DHL. Now shipping seems to cost $19.47 to Finland by DHL.

Willy
Willy
10 years ago
MH
MH
10 years ago

Embeddedcomputer shipping to Finland is €27.53 which is quite an expensive, almost 50% for the price of the board.

onebir
onebir
10 years ago

Maybe this is the cheapest place to get one:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/PhoenixA20-First-ARM-A7-PicoITX-board-p-1695.html?cPath=6_8
(Pretty sure it’s free shipping for orders >$50)

Roel
Roel
8 years ago

Is there somebody who wants to sale this board 2nd hand. I’m searching for one but it seems they are sold out…

Roel
Roel
8 years ago


It’s Pico-itx, easier to put in a case + sata + i2S
Indeed for this price I can buy something more powerfull, but it’s hard to find some boards with sata.

Fossxplorer
Fossxplorer
8 years ago

Allwiner A20 boards have gbit Ethernet, but not this one?

Roel
Roel
8 years ago


Indeed all to expensive, I can buy a matrix board with a imx6q for 80€. I think I go for that one, altough i don’t know if these have I2S available to connect a DAC.

tkaiser
tkaiser
8 years ago

@Roel
There exist a few A20 SBC with SATA, GBit Ethernet and I2S available, the cheapest one being Banana Pro: http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS

But you can’t use DAC HATs on Banana Pro due to different pinouts. All informations here: http://forum.lemaker.org/thread-11807-1-1.html

Roel
Roel
8 years ago

@tkaiser
I was first planning to buy a bpi R1 (or lamobo R1). But I understand from the armbian forum it’s crap It seems indeed that the banana pro has a good design.

tkaiser
tkaiser
8 years ago

@Roel
I would avoid the R1 (great idea but totally f*cked up implementation). And be careful regarding I2S. Not many A20 boards route it to the outside.

Roel
Roel
8 years ago

Seems like the orange pi plus also have I2S: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=206&extra=&page=1
I will wait until they tested it.

Khadas VIM4 SBC