Waveshare's ESP32-C6-LCD-1.47 Is a Development Board for the World's Tiniest Smartphone

Embedded and hobbyist electronics specialist Waveshare has launched a development board based around the Espressif ESP32-C6 microcontroller, cramming a smartphone-like display into just 1.47" — while retaining breadboard compatibility.

"[The] ESP32-C6-LCD-1.47 integrates LCD display, onboard TF Card [microSD Card] slot and multiple peripheral interfaces," Waveshare writes of its latest development board. "[The] onboard 1.47" LCD screen can smoothly run GUI [Graphical User Interface] programs such as LVGL. Combined with various peripheral interfaces, [it is] suitable for the quick development of the HMI [Human-Machine Interface] and other ESP32-C6 applications."

The processor at the heart of the compact development board, brought to our attention by CNX Software, is Espressif's ESP32-C6, which includes a single 32-bit RISC-V core running at up to 160MHz and a secondary low-power RISC-V core running at up to 20MHz. There's 512kB of static RAM (SRAM), plus 16kB of low-power SRAM for the secondary core, 320kB of on-chip flash and 4MB of additional flash, plus a radio delivering single-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE) connectivity.

The front of the board is dominated by its LCD display, a 1.47" rounded-edge rectangular panel with a 172×320 resolution and 262,000 colors. To look at from the top, the result is very smartphone-like — until you get a sense of just how tiny the device is in the hand. There's no battery, though, and flipping the board over reveals unpopulated breadboard-friendly pin headers for general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connectivity — including pulse-width modulation (PWM) on all pins and analog inputs on six.

The board is available to buy on the Waveshare store for $11.99 before volume discounts.