Hey there @jenschr – would love to have a conversation about some of your concerns. Particle's path and direction have changed at least a couple of times since we first launched the Photon in 2015, which I think is common for growing startups trying to find the best path to achieve their goal, which for us is enabling product creators like yourselves to deploy real IoT products that solve real problems and create real value.
Let me address a few concerns that I pulled out of your post:
I hear you – with the majority of our enterprise customer base on cellular and 2G/3G sunsets rolling out across the world, our focus has been on building out a global LTE strategy that supports our customers in navigating that transition. That does not rule out the possibility of a Wi-Fi M.2 SoM, but wanted to provide an update on where our new product development resources have been going.
This is true, but the carrier landscape tends to be far rosier than reality, and there are some very real challenges that prevent NB1 from being a viable technology for IoT product creators:
- It is designed for stationary objects and does not have support for mobile handoff, making it a poor solution for asset tracking use cases (a huge part of our customer base)
- There is very little if any production-ready roaming agreements in place for NB1. The first agreements (between big carriers like AT&T and Vodafone are just being established and have not been broadly tested). This means that, if you're deploying internationally, you'd need a different SIM (and thus a different carrier integration and SKU) for every carrier / country that you're deploying into
- The best solution for LTE-ready global deployments presently is LTE CAT 1, and we've recently launched a new SoM (the B523) that is targeted for production-ready deployments in Europe and leverages our M.2 form factor
I respectfully disagree. RoHS compliance is self-declared – we do the audits with our downstream suppliers to ensure our products are RoHS compliant and provide declarations of conformity to customers upon request. It is not necessary to have a full BoM to achieve certification and this is a process we support dozens of customers with each year.
Unfortunately I cannot give you that assurance, and we do not recommend the P0 and P1 for new designs. This is because those parts are relatively old in semiconductor terms, and ongoing availability is determined by USI, our upstream manufacturing partner.
We recommend that new designs leverage the Argon, which includes a more modern ESP32 modem.
We're committed to the M.2 form factor for just this reason – forward compatibility. Glad to hear that this design format creates value for you as a product creator.