Why?

I’ve always fuckin loved small gadgets. Small electronics and gizmos. Ask any one of my friends and they’d tell you I am kind of obsessed with the stuff, especially small emulator handhelds from China. Being in that “sphere” of the internet for a long time, I’ve come to know a lot of different “name brands” such as Anbernic, PowKiddy and GPD. Tech moves fast in China, and trends come and go pretty often. For awhile now, GPD in particular has always marketed and released small, handheld Windows devices. The majority of these are oriented more towards gaming, as evident by their built-in-controller buttons, but GPD has also released a handful of devices marketed as just laptops.

Of these laptops, few have caught my eye more than the GPD MicroPC, released back in 2019. This handheld PC was marketed towards “IT Professionals” with it’s better than average standard IO, “usable” keyboard and “industry” focused ports like the full sized RS-232 serial port and gigabit ethernet jack. The downside of this little fella, aside from being released in 2019, is that it’s specs aren’t that much to write home about. A N4120 Celeron with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of M2 SATA storage. For what it is, the specs aren’t horrible, they are just dated by today’s standards. The MicroPC shipped with Windows 10 or Ubuntu Mate 18.04, the latter of which would probably have been my OS of choice just knowing how… great Windows 10 runs on lower spec machines. Back when it was debuted, the MicroPC cost $299 as part of an Indiegogo campaign. More recently, you can find it on Aliexpress for around $300-$350. Weirdo resellers on Amazon hike the prices up all over the place, sometimes going for $400, sometimes going for like $560 which is actually fucking bonkers.

GPD has released a “successor” to this device in the form of the GPD Pocket 3, which is significantly more “modern” and quite handsome. It downgrades the more “thumb-typeable” keyboard that the MicroPC used for slightly more familiar laptop chiclet keys, gives you two separate CPU options (the 11th gen i7-1195G7 or Pentium Silver N6000) and offers two different RAM configurations as well (16GB or 8GB, but each seems to be paired with their respective tier of processor and is not configurable). The display got bumped up by 2 inches, is actually touch and swivels now and the IO has seen some changes as well. The big showstopper is the “switchable” module interface on the back of the device that allows you to use a RS-232 serial port, “KVM Module” (a.k.a. HDMI and USB in) or just another boring old USB-A module. This kind of modularity with a small, pocketable PC is pretty sweet, but this degree of choices also drove the price up a LOT. The Pocket 3 was released on Indiegogo with the lower spec N6000/8GB variant running for about ~$700 and the higher spec i7-119567/16GB running for closer to $1000+.

I love buying dumb shit (as my blog may kind of already show by now) and I love tinkering. I’ve wanted a small little PC to dick around with but never really had the motivation to go out and get one. The Indiegogo campaigns are fine, and I mean I’ve backed stuff on similar sites before (like the Unihertz Jelly Star), but I’ve never really had the fluid cash to just blow on something like this. Ordering stuff on Aliexpress is also something I’ve only really more recently got into because I SWEAR they never used to take PayPal (or maybe my debit card always blocked me from ordering off the site? I can’t remember).

The thing is, getting stuff off AliExpress is a bit of a committment. You go ahead and blow $400-some-odd-dollars on something, wait 2 weeks to a month to arrive and then try to return it! That sounds like shit! Amazon? Jeff Bezos and his sweatshops? They kind of fuck with the whole equation. Being able to get something off Amazon, with Prime Shipping is a fucking vice. If you are an impulsive shopper Amazon is the fucking DEVIL. One fine afternoon working offsite recently, I got to perusing Amazon and noticed a LIGHTNING DEAL on this little bastard, the Mini Laptop,8 inch HD Touch Screen Mini Computer Windows 11 Pro, Intel N100 4 cores 2-in-1 Pocket PC 12GB LPDDR5 RAM 512GB M.2 SSD, Gigibit | Wi-fi 6 | BT5.2 | 2MP Camera | G-Sensor | HDMI. Name just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?.

undeniableproof

Essentially, I got a GPD Pocket 3 clone off Amazon for ~$350. I kinda dig it.

The Pros

So in order to make this post more… digestable… I’ve decided to try limiting myself to a pros/cons style format. This kind of apes what I’ve already subjected my friends to on Discord and blasted into an Amazon review, but what the hell. I felt like posting here, so I am GOING TO.

It’s tiny! The novelty of something this small being capable of running full fat 64-bit Windows is something else.
For $320, this thing is not that bad. Compare it to the GPD MicroPC and Pocket 3 and it’s kind of an inbetween device. Not as fancy as the Pocket 3 and not nearly the same kind of IO, BUT definitely more powerful than the MicroPC with a significantly faster processor, 12GB of actually DDR5 RAM (at 4800MT/s) and a larger dispay more akin to the Pocket 3.
The battery life genuinely impressed me. Yes, it is a 6W TDP processor, but this thing gets about 6 hours of runtime with my “balanced” performance setting. Running it at a higher performance profile would probably see that battery life drop quite a bit, but it’s better than you’d think for the price and… no-named-ness of it all.
Windows 10 isn’t the WORST on it. I’d prefer to be running Linux on the device, but there are issues preventing me from doing so that I’ll detail more below.
It can take a true NVME SSD which is kind of awesome. The stock drive wasn’t horrible, but as an M2 SATA it topped out around 500mb/s. I got a “brand new OEM” WD Black 512GB NVME off of eBay for about $20 that fuckin rips in comparison, clocking in around 3500mb/s write.

ssdcomparison

Comparison between the Stock MSATA SSD and the WD Black drive I got off eBay for $20

The touch screen is actually shockingly responsive and the included pen has full pressure support. I’m no artist, but it’s pretty cool to have the option to whip out a pen and take notes. Assuming I do that sort of thing (I don’t).
The all metal build of this thing is actually pretty premium feeling. It’s not just a metal top or bottom plate, the entire thing is machined (in aluminum? idk).
I’ll delve more into the IO selection further on, but the ports that are here work well. USB-A, USB-C, full sized HDMI and gigabit ethernet are all accounted for. Headphone jack, too.
This thing has front facing dual speakers, which is neat. More than some phones.
Ethernet on a handheld device this small is awesome for sysadmin stuff. I wish it could run Linux so I could put some different kinds of tools on it, but for now things like LDPWin work awesome for detecting switch information from an unlabeled jack, and WireShark can aparently work pretty well for other detection type things.

The Mixed Feelings

The trackpoint is actually fine. It’s usable. Similar to how ThinkPad trackpoints work, but more of a sensor than an analog nubbin. You can “tap” the sensor to click, which is novel. Unfortunate downside is that you can’t do any middle-button stuff or scrolling with it. Two finger tapping and the such aren’t available obviously for size reasons.
The keyboard is USABLE but it isn’t stellar. You can type quick things on it, but it is far too cramped to be comfortable. It’s responsive enough and the keys feel fine but the non-standard layout is very frustrating to use for long periods of time. Not TTOTD worthy.
The IO could be significantly better. Had whoever-actually-makes-this-thing cloned the GPD Pocket 3 more faithfully, we could have gotten at least one more USB-A port and maybe a MicroSD card slot? That would have been nice.
This thing ships with Windows 11 Pro, but I dislike Windows 11 so I have installed Windows 10 LTSC 2021 instead. LTSC runs great and with some modificiations, it feels very fully featured. I debated using something like Windows 10 AME or another “stripped down” variant, but LTSC works fine (and activates easily with the Massgrave scripts).
The ability to swivel and rotate the screen is neat but I don’t have the most confidence in the hinge. Often times in the “normal” front facing position, the display almost feels crooked.
It feels like this thing charges pretty slow. It’s not a big deal but it is noticeable. I used a USB-C power meter to take a peek and it goes from anywhere between 15w and 30w; there is a setting in the BIOS to enable “fast charging” but that doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference as far as I can tell.
The inclusion of a webcam is nice, but there’s no indicator light to tell when it’s being used. A bit of a whatever, I’m not paranoid enough to cover it with tape but I could.

The Negatives

As far as I can tell, Koosmile didn’t make this thing. Neither did CRELANDER or any other random dropshipping brand that slapped their name on the back of this thing and called it a day. I’ve seen some stuff to suggest that Topton is the OEM designing these things and providing them to different resellers, but there’s no confirmation on this. Topton does sell it on their Aliexpress store as the “Topton P8” though.
There are no vendor strings in the BIOS making things difficult for some circumstances. The computer doesn’t know what it is, as far as everything else is concerned there’s no “Koosmile” branding (or any other branding) anywhere to be found on the inside of the device.
The display is… funky.
- The panel reports as 640x480 to the OS (despite Intel drivers being able to figure it out) and combined with the lack of BIOS strings and a proper VBIOS table, this thing is unusable with Linux at the moment.
- Even with the most bleeding edge kernel, the best you can do is install an OS and then boot into it, but then put the laptop to sleep or close the lid to force the panel to come back to you.
- Rotation only worked on some of the OSes I’ve tried, typically the more modern ones running Kernel 6.0 and above. An older ISO I had of Linux Mint boots to a display instead of a dark screen, but you can’t rotate or adjust the resolution of the panel.
- Pretty much everything outside the OS is sideways as a result of whoever made this thing sourcing a portrait panel. Once you boot into Windows, this is fine, but doing anything like Windows recovery or booting off a USB stick will have you tilting your head or the device to the side to see what is going on.
The BIOS is kind of wild. There are SO many features included here I can only imagine it’s a stock random BIOS from literally any other board that they just slapped on this thing. There’s truly so many features here that it feels like you could break something.
The USB A and HDMI ports are upsidedown?? This isn’t really a big issue for HDMI but USB is kind of funky if you have something like a CH341a flasher plugged in with all of the working bits facing up. There is probably a usb “flipper” out there you could plug in, but that kinda defeats the purpose of wanting to live a dongle-less lifestyle with something this compact.
I am worried that the battery will be impossible to replace as the device ages. I tried looking it up and it seems like three or two mobile phone cells all attached together so maybe it’s possible to figure out a replacement but I’m not really smart enough to piece together how that works at the moment.
There is literally no website anywhere hosting actual drivers for this thing. Luckily, “Around In Circles” on YouTube has a video about it where they link to an archive they put together on their website.

Random Things

Some Photos

Here are some images I took that may find themselves to be useful eventually? Maybe?

the innards

The inside

Inside you can see the funky L-shaped battery, labeled WYC705812-3S. This means and finds nothing as far as I can tell on Google. The “Standard” GB31231-2014 does show that this is some sort of mobile phone battery?

BIOS

The BIOS chip, a FM25W1282324J00

Edit 04-05-24 I managed to soft brick my laptop by fucking with settings in the wild ass BIOS. I tried to dump this chip with my CH341a (black) flasher, but I couldn’t get Flashrom to find the chip or ASProgrammer under Windows either. It’s totally possible my flasher is just fucked up again (because it has recently managed to kill two T480s laptops :smile:) but I also don’t know.

Software

Additionally, I’ve been using BatteryBarPro to show a more detailed battery meter on the taskbar of this thing and I really like it quite a bit. I TRIED to buy a legitmate license for the software because the website actually still sells it, but the key I received refuses to activate. Archive.org has an upload with a registered version plus some nice themes I have been using instead. Oh well… ¯\(ツ)/¯

Investigative Journalism (TM)

When I was trying to find some information out on this thing, I did manage to find the manual from Amazon uploaded to a bunch of websites. I never looked at the paper manual myself because they’re typically garbage but interestingly enough, the paper manual lists what I am assuming is the actual model number for this thing, 2A8WM-P8. Looking this up, you can find the FCC registration and some information on the company that filed for it. It was filed by “Shenzhen Anxin Taihe Technology Co., Ltd”, which seems to have uploaded the instruction manual with Koosmile branding, but the Alibaba page for them lists the P8 and multiple other laptops without any branding at all.

The FCC filing includes multiple documents with photos. One is an internal teardown of the device, confirming that when I thought I bricked mine, I unplugged the speakers thinking it was a CMOS battery! Rookie mistake.

The Panel

Additional info; feel free to track the ongoing hunt to fix the panel under Linux here:

So…

So I mean… Kind of a mixed bag? But fun nonetheless. I am impatiently refreshing the bugtracker report for the Intel Linux drivers to see if anyone happens to figure something out - be it with a BIOS mod or some kernel/driver fuckery. I do think the novelty of being able to run full Windows on a device this small is one of the main selling points, but having a teeny tiny Linux lappy that isn’t based on an RPi or some other ARM SBC is a cool concept too.

I think for the price and immediate availability, this thing is pretty fun. It’s a cool novelty item, funny gadget and somewhat useful all in one package, so long as you are willing to kind of temper your expectations and meet the device in the middle. It’s not a full laptop replacement, and things like my ThinkPads (using a L390 now :sunglasses:) will never be fully retired in my collection. Maybe my Chromebook though, I don’t really have a TON of use for that thing at the moment aside from experiencing the botnet in it’s most RAW form. Maybe I’ll finish the thing I started writing about that thing a year ago and never posted, teehee.

Yeah, so I am going to try my fuckin damnedest to keep finding reasons to post here. I want to have a funny little page where people can randomly search something and find my website and then go “wow, this guy is a fuckin weirdo”, but in like… a helpful “I sure am glad this page existed” kind of way.

Yeah man.

~ Tiduscrying 04-03-24