[colinng]

Yes, the Pinecil (both versions) are awesome, and if you buy several and split the shipping with friends, affordable.

But a majority of the work was done by the RalimOS project (firmware for several soldering irons). In the end, the input is DC or USB PD, a thermistor, accelerometer, volt meter, two buttons, and the output is a heating coil and a status screen.

For the soldering iron to work is several orders of magnitude lower complexity than a phone.

I’m sure they’d love for someone like Ralim to come along and write the entire OS for them. The problem is, as other posters have mentioned, there just aren’t enough millionaire programmers with nothing better to do than write a phone OS for you for free.