$10 Smartphone Display Released for Orange Pi 2G-IoT Board

Orange Pi 2G-IoT is a low cost ARM Linux board with 2G, and WiFi & Bluetooth connectivity, basically with the guts of a smartphone minus the display and battery. Shenzhen Xunlong has now released a 800×480 display with capacitive touch support for the board available in black or white, and selling for $9.98 plus shipping.

The board is too thick to make a smartphone out of it, but it reminds of the very expensive Qualcomm MDP’s (Mobile Development Platform), so Android app developers may find some use to test their apps on lower end hardware.  It could also be used for control panels that do not need to be very thin.

Orange Pi 2G-IoT display specifications:

  • 3.5″ TFT Display with 800×480 resolution
  • Capacitive touchscreen
  • Case with the Back, Home, and Recent buttons
  • Dimensions – With case: 57.14 x 96.85 x 2.0 mm; Display only: 51.84 x 86.4mm

Software support is a mystery, and while I’m pretty sure it will work in Android, I don’t know if Linux distributions will support the display, at least at the beginning. The complete kit with the board and display would cost $20 plus shipping.

Via Raffaele Tranquillini on Embedded Electronics Projects G+ community

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37 Comments
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Miha
Miha
7 years ago

The screen looks to me like it’s of 16:9 or 16:10 ration and not 4:3

Willy
Willy
7 years ago

@Miha

The screen looks to me like it’s of 16:9 or 16:10 ration and not 4:3

800/480 is 1.6666 or exactly 15:9 or approx 16:10.

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

Their must be loads of phablet board designs around, pity no business seems interested in adding a gpio to one.

Someone from the other side
Someone from the other side
7 years ago

Can android really run on 256M ram these days?

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

@Someone from the other side
That is not as easy answer as you might think. As CNX pointed out it is the guts, parts of a smartphone. Many Android 4.x. Smartphone have low amounts of ram, in the low budget phone section. Look up the 2013 , Cubot GT72

This Orange Pi 2G is based on a India phone.

tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago

Someone from the other side :
Can android really run on 256M ram these days?

How is Android ‘these days’ related to an Android 4.x device as the one here? 🙂 According to specs Android starting with 4.0 requires 340 MB available to kernel/userspace (GPU reservations and stuff like that already considered so good luck with just 256 MB total DRAM available)

On the other hand: Should this touch display ever be supported by Linux it’s at least cheap (and since it’s cheap the ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ people will buy it anyway)

Greg
Greg
7 years ago

Hi.

Is this a MIPI screen ?

Can it work without that huge board ? Or maybe can it be trimmed ?

Thanks.

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

Back in 2014 to 2015 people where hacking phones for IOT , remember http://janos.io/

Aleksey Belskiy
7 years ago

OMG crap

benjamin
7 years ago

what about a camera module ?

tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago

@benjamin
GC0309

jim st
jim st
7 years ago

Definitely an MDP type display. I’ll probably build up one to play with with android with this like everyone else.

jim st
jim st
7 years ago

@theguyuk
Are the Orange Pi SOC’s “denatured” phone SOC’s or are they tablet type chips?

Most all of the Qualcomm chips, for instance, will have all the silicon to run the phone incorporated, but will be inaccessible to the user, with only the Application Processor available.

But a lot of the other SOC’s seem to be only the application processor and nothing else. Mainly with features to support a tablet application, but placed on the small processor footprint boards.

willy
willy
7 years ago


ah OK, then feel free to remove mine to remove some of the confusion 🙂

Jon Smirl
7 years ago

$10 is an extremely low price for this 800×480 screen with CTP. Does anyone know who the supplier is? We are paying more than $10 for a lower resolution screen in volume.

Or is this surplus from an old phone and not in production anymore?

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

@jim st
Afraid I don’t know.

I know the soc comes from China but so far there are two India phones that used it, that I have found.

xxiao
xxiao
7 years ago

can I run a non-android linux on it? that will be fun

tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago

@jim st
There are no Orange Pi SOC’s (plural) since Xunlong uses different ones on their various boards. Allwinner A20 and A64 (tablet), Allwinner H2+, H3 and H5 (most probably H6 will follow, as well as Rockchip RK3399 — these are all TV box SoCs), the RDA Micro 8810PL can only be found on this board and what you might have learned about other Orange Pi (vendor software/support sucks but great community around) might not apply here anytime soon or at all. Current community efforts are of course based on Linux/IoT and not Android.

tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago


No idea, just wanted to give a hint in which direction ‘community efforts’ go with this board and where to contribute. But maybe @parrotgeek1 will comment here… (at least he looked through the entire kernel sources already). Or maybe asking in Orange Pi forum…

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

The intex aqua 2 phone has this CPU and memory , storage. It runs Jelliybean 4.2.2 and sells in India. So in theory you could put Jellybean on the Orange 2G . But is it worth it?

The intex aqua 2 is reported to have a

Single Core 8810PL 32bit Processor
– 256MB RAM With 512MB ROM
– 2.8 Inch QVGA Touchscreen Display With 120PPI
– Dual SIM
– VGA Rear Camera With LED Flash
– VGA Front Camera
– 2G
– WiFi
– Bluetooth 2.1/FM
– 1100 MAh Battery.

GPU: Vivante GC860

tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago

theguyuk :
So in theory you could put Jellybean on the Orange 2G

Just for the record: Orange Pi 2G-IoT ships with Android in NAND and boots from it by default (‘in theory’?). To let it boot from SD card you need to fiddle around with the dip switches (and need a ‘compatible’ SD card, some cards do not work most probably due to timing issues). All information easily available through above link to thread in Armbian forum.

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

@tkaiser
In theory you can put Android on a Orange 2G but is Android worth it with so little memory and rom. If you want Android buy the several phones available, get screen, battery and case plus charger etc. Secondhand they are even cheaper still. There is also the Videocon Challenger V40LD Android 4.4 cost about 50 dollars officially.

jasbir
jasbir
7 years ago


The display has a 16bit parallel interface with additional lines on the 40 pin connector for the i2c touch interface. Should be possible to interface it to other SBC’s by developing a breakout broad.

Axel
Axel
7 years ago

@jasbir
That would be interesting. Is there a data sheet if the display and die connector somewhere?

jasbir
jasbir
7 years ago

@Axel

The schematics (www.orangepi.org/download/2G-IOT-V1.4.pdf) show the pin outs of the connector and the 16bit interface point to RGB565 as the input.

Jon Smirl
7 years ago

Has anyone received one of these yet? Is there a part number on the display to know where it is sourced from?

The reference design uses a display from: http://kingdisplay.net.cn
KD50G2-40NM-A2
But that is a 5in 800×480 panel.

When I search for 800×480 panels at lcd88.com no one makes a 800×480 panel smaller than 5in. Highest resolution 3.5in display I see is 640×480. 480×320 is common.

If this is a 5in 800×480 panel, $9.95 is a steal. Those are $20+ panels.

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

High res 3.5 tft get used on DSLR cameras or video

jasbir
jasbir
7 years ago

@Jon Smirl

I’m guessing its a 3.97″ panel based on the dimensions quoted, something like this http://www.topfoison.com/product/3.97inch-tft-lcd-module.html.

Jon Smirl
7 years ago

Here is similar display for 39RMB ($5.70)
https://detail.1688.com/offer/532585341364.html
3.97in matches the dimensions Opi gives for the glass.

So they must be able to source for the 4inch CTP for under 15RMB.
So far I am unable to locate one for that price.

theguyuk
theguyuk
7 years ago

@Jon Smirl
If you go on dhgate, type in iPhone 4s lcd, amongst the results you will see below ten dollar versions. I know bigger than you look for but it shows someone is making cheap LCD displays.

“. The display of the iPhone 4 is manufactured by LG under an exclusive contract with Apple. It features an LED backlit TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen with a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch (ppi) on a 3.5 in (8.9 cm) (diagonally measured), 960×640 display. “

Khadas VIM4 SBC