The New Orange Pi 4 LTS SBC Swaps Out a Few Parts to Work Around Ongoing Component Shortages
Swapping out a few harder-to-find components, the Orange Pi 4 LTS should be available in larger quantities than its predecessor — or rivals.
Shenzhen Xunlong, creator of the Orange Pi family of single-board computers, has unveiled its latest board design: the Orange Pi 4 LTS, offering much the same specifications as its earlier Orange Pi 4 but with more readily-available components.
The latest entry in the Orange Pi family, which originally launched on the back of the popularity of the Raspberry Pi range of single-board computers, offers some impressive specifications in its compact footprint. The heart of the board is a jauntily-angled Rockchip RK3399, offering two high-performance Arm Cortex-A72 cores and four lower-power Cortex-A53 cores with a maximum speed up to 1.8GHz plus an Arm Mali-T860 graphics processor.
On top of that, Orange Pi has added 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, optional 16GB eMMC on-board storage expandable via microSD, and gigabit Ethernet plus a combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 radio with external antenna. There are HDMI 2.0a and DisplayPort 1.2-over-USB Type-C video outputs supporting 4k video at 60Hz, plus dual MIPI DSI, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, and a USB 3.0 Type-C port, and two MIPI CSI camera connectors. There's also a mini-PCI Express (mPCIe) connector for hardware expansion.
In short, it's almost identical to the earlier Orange Pi 4 — but with only 4GB of RAM instead of up to 8GB. Almost, but not quite: The "LTS" suffix, meaning "Long Term Support," indicates the board has been launched to work around shortages in components for the original Orange Pi 4.
As a result, the previously-mandatory 16GB eMMC chip is now optional, the AP6256 radio module is a CDW 20U5622, the Realtek RTL8211E Ethernet module is a YT8531C, and — oddly — the 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header has been replaced with 26-pin version based on the very first Raspberry Pi models.
These changes aside, the Orange Pi 4 and Orange Pi 4 LTS should be identical in performance and compatibility — including using the same customized Android, Debian, and Ubuntu operating system images.
The board, with its optional 16GB eMMC chip, has been listed on Shenzhen Xunlong's AliExpress store at $72.90 plus $4.05 shipping; parts are due to be shipped early next week, the company has confirmed.