Flipper Devices Readies Crowdfunding for the Flipper One, Opens Pre-Orders for a $20 Deposit

Flipper Devices, creator of the popular Flipper Zero microcontroller-based multitool, has received approval for its Flipper One all-in-one pocket computer crowdfunding campaign — and is accepting pre-order reservations for $20 to secure units at $379 on launch.

"We've passed Kickstarter verification for the Flipper One campaign," the company announced this week. "In the meantime, you can sign in and check that your account, shipping address and payment details are updated. Shipping will be available to USA, EU, UK, Canada, and Australia. Pre-order coupon holders will receive an email with instructions, launch dates and all the details."

Unveiled back in May, and the device the company actually set out to build before side-stepping to the stop-gap microcontroller-powered Flipper Zero six years ago, the Flipper One is a fully-functional all-in-one computer designed to slip into your pocket. Borrowing the same rough layout as the Flipper Zero, the Flipper Zero features a 256×144-pixel 64-grey LCD screen with orange light and a combination of touchpad and five-way directional pad for user interaction.

Where the Flipper Zero is based on a microcontroller, though, the Flipper One packs a Rockchip RK3576 system-on-chip with four high-performance Arm Cortex-A72 cores and four more efficient Cortex-A54 cores, an Arm Mali G52 MC3 graphics processor, and an accelerator for on-board machine learning and computer vision workloads delivering a claimed six tera-operations per second (TOPS) at INT8 precision, alongside 8GB of LPDDR5 memory and 64GB of storage with microSD expansion. A Raspberry Pi RP2350B microcontroller acts as a coprocessor for real-time workloads, too.

Despite its dramatically increased power, the main user interface retains the same playful approach as the original Flipper Zero: a "cyberdolphin" acts like a Tamagotchi-inspired virtual pet, becoming happy or sad the more or less the user interacts with the device. USB and HDMI connectivity, meanwhile, mean that the portable PC can be connected to an external display, keyboard, and mouse for use as a full desktop system.

With approval now in place, the Flipper One crowdfunding page is live on Kickstarter — but not yet available to back. Instead, Flipper Devices has opened pre-orders for a $20 refundable-until-used deposit, which will unlock a "hidden reward tier" whereby backers can order a Flipper One at a discounted $379 — a way, the company says, of hedging its bets against rising memory prices by gauging interest prior to the campaign launch proper. As with all crowdfunding campaigns, fulfillment is not guaranteed — but Flipper Devices does, at least, have a good track record of delivering on its promises.