Hi Khadas Team,
You mentioned that the VIM2 will be available in the second quarter (Q2) of 2017. We are almost at the end of the 2nd quarter. Do you have an indication as to when it will be released?
I don’t have plan to buy VIM (2) until there is no fully Linux GPU Hardware support mainline for VIM (1) Pro to use Kodi (or other Video Application) with Hardware Accelerated Decoding.
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Has it transponser stream interface (s912 has two Ts interface) for dvb tuner? Dou you think about to add tuner part (dvb s2/s2x/T/T2/C)
hi @takitr, a DVB extension board for VIM2 is in developing, will be ready soon. please refer to topic DVB/DTV Extension Board for VIM2 (vTV)
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Is VIM2 already for sale? When search for it on Gearbest, I find it but cannot buy it.
Looking forward to own this device 
Hello, I don’t think they have launched VIM2 yet. Gouwa posted some info about WiFi testing and optimizing yesterday.
It would be extremely helpful to have some kind of update to this. There are people waiting to spend money that are looking for an indication for when they can order. We are fast approaching being 33 percent through quarter number three at this point and as a new member of the community who is very excited about the Vim 2 I have to say its disappointing to see the one question I would like an answer on sitting here without answer since May…
Thank you for your eyes tasinofan. Also disappointing to see this information on a retailers site first. At least now I know about what it will cost. Would have rather obtained that here. Typically communities are built to get the hardware locked in before RTM. This looks to be the opposite situation. Where the retailers get the hardware first and the internal testers leaving the community last.
Is there a need for more Khadas team members?
such price would not make any sense at all!
I must say i am dissappointed with Vim, i have Vim pro, and i do regret buying it.
I know they are a small team, but i am tired of waiting for Linux hw acceleration, even Android builds have bugs that can make your device unusable, i can’t even use it as a media player.
I bought a fan for it, fan is loud, and the way the fan is connected, it was done by total amateur, i hope they will learn from their mistakes.
The whole concept is wrong, i bought Vim, then i have to wait few months for Linux support, it should be available as soon as the device starts selling.
I did bought it because of Linux support, that is why i didn’t buy an Android box.
If there is too much work with one device to handle, how will they manage to support two devices???
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hi, Tommy21:
Thanks for the objective appraise, we did really not as good(may bad) as many Khadas users except so far.
Yes, as you can imagine, we are a start up with a small team, when we launch VIM1, we have only 3 members including me(Terry, Willow and me), and 6 members now with average age at 28.
When we started our company, we focused more on ODM and OEM(same with many other design house in Shenzhen, China), we provide customized services for our foreign customers according to their project requirements. Our services including hardware & software development, ID and CD designing(outsource to our partners), PCBA SMT and manufacturing/assembly(cooperation with other factory). Things comes easy for us even with 3 members, as we service only to limited business customers.
When we provide the ODM and ORM services, we keep researching for a better products, and we design Geekbox and VIM(haven’t decided to brand as Khadas at first as we thought we were still a small team and can’t afford with better enough services to our end retail users), so we developed some 3rd party companies to promote the products, things were not going as good as we expected:
- Trading companies: can’t understand this products, they cannot provide technical services, and most of them spend more energy on products promotions and less on services, even that few of them know they should focus on technical service also, but they don’t have technical guys.
- Design house companies: they tend to assist their marketing like TV-Box and Tablets which comes more quantities and better profits.
Above are part of the reasons why we we decided to start Khadas, of course, one another important reason is that we we’re desired to do that!
I have and must to say, even we run VIM by ourselves, things still not goes smoothly, one reason is that the limited team members we have. Actually, when we decided to run Khadas, and we reduced many ODM/OEM requires in order to put more team energy and resources on Khadas VIM:
- Run Khadas Forum and community
- Run Khadas Docs
- Gather end users feedbacks and try to resolve all users problems or issues
We put more than half of our company’s energy and resources on Khadas, sadly to say that we didn’t do good with all above. In fact, currently, Khadas haven’t brought our company profits yet, we still got profits from ODM services and put most of them into Khadas. As you might known, we cannot put all our team resources into Khadas, thanks but sorry to the Khadas users.
Many users might confuse why we developed VIM2 rather than put the energy to VIM1 software development and technical services:
- Currently, our business model is that we give most of the products profits to 3rd companies like Gearbest.com and outsource the products promotion to them, so we can focus more on technical services and documentation.
- We will keep VIM1 retail price to bring more users to Khadas community, but we need a new product which can come with profits
- Some users told us they want a better performance Khadas product
VIM2 comes with more about business strategies, and at the same time, the distributions also expected us can launch more products lines, they thought a brand cannot come with only one product(same with end users, sometimes we also need try to match their feedback).
Even the economic statistics of Khadas not comes well currently, we still and will assist on it, that’s why we enlarge our team with another 3 members now. I think things will goes better and better in the future 
Again, thanks for the feedback and suggestions!
Gouwa / Khadas team
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Thanks Gouwa for detailed reply.
Congratulations to Khadas team for designing hardware also around the idea of DIY and open source.
I think, this way: if eventually up to date linux will run the way some users expect (with X11 acceleration etc…), then sure VIM will be one of the first products to do so.
Have a nice day
Hi to the team of six heroes who work at khadas 
first, It surely was a very engaging decision to start this new company with a product which tries to find its specific public in an over crowded market : the market of chinese arm based SOC doing TV box and eventually competing with raspberry pi as a linux prototyping board for DIYers. I rushed to order my vim pro because I am a DIYer and because of the promise of linux support on it, I did and still do not care at all about running android on this board because I’ve already got much more than enough android devices .
I still do not understand how just another android TV box w/ some extra 40pin GPIO could made khadas become profitable while they also want to cover the linux DIyer’s market.
I wish them good luck because the DIYers like me are not satisfied with the software side of the product. Khadas cannot afford to spend the needed time to refining the linux software and tools and docs, the main result of this is deceived customers who will probably will not buy the vim2.
I think that releasing Vim2 is a rushed decision, especially when you have so much to do with one product, and as you have pointed out, you really are a small team.
This forums could really help you, but you need to fix all this stuff that we users need, that would be a great marketing, i am sure many of us would then recommend this device to anyone, to friends and on other forums.
If someone makes a search about Vim and looks here, he won’t find a reason to buy the device, he will see deceived buyers, Vim2 will then have less buyers than Vim1.
I understand that you have a lot of work to do outside Vim, but we would all like to have a fully working device, not Android box, because there are hundreds of these boxes, and i wanted to have a Linux mini pc.
I was promised an sd card Ubuntu image, and you still didn’t do that, that is a failure, i don’t understand that it is so hard to do, this is just one of these things you failed to deliver.
Nougat has a message “system ui has stopped” showing up every few seconds, and you didn’t even try to fix it, i have seen on yt that i am not the only one with it.
You could and should have ota update available, we need to burn new image with every update, it was a must, at least for Android builds.
There are a lot of reasons for us (customers) not to believe you, and unfortunately most of them are valid, but i hope you will soon prove us wrong.
I would sincerely like you to succeed, it would be great for all of us.
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Khadas team does not write linux nor X11 nor wayland nor FB, let alone Gnome or KDE on its own. These are all open source projects. Support for some chips may depend on the chip vendor willingness to support open source or dedicated developers to write open source equivalent.
I am sure VIM has more support and developers than most other equivalents, end even if not so (I guess Raspberry and some others have even stronger community), all vendors can (not (yet)) take advantage of what software is (not (yet)) available. But I suspect VIM to pick up improvements equally fast (if not faster) than others.
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As a buyer of the Vim1, I do not regret that I bought it. Having said that, I share some of the concerns Tommy21 has expressed. We need to understand that hardware, rightly or wrongly, is becoming a commodity these days, and the success of your product depends mostly on the software ecosystem and customer support. People are usually willing to pay a bit more money for a well supported product. Also keeping development alive for older products while designing new ones is a sign of long term strategy and respect for customer investment. There are many companies out there that always solve the problem with the next product, and the only solution is to discard the old one. Customers do not like that. It allows to make a quick buck, yes, but such companies do not get loyal customers in the long run.
I think Khadas has done a good job with the VIM hardware, yes, but guys you need to understand that you will be judged by the quality of the software running in the device. So while you need to dedicate resources to complete the VIM2, you also need, IMHO, to make sure your new builds will continue fixing bugs and bringing new features to the VIM1 as well.
Just my $0.02.
PS Hope the new VIM2 does not cost $131…
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I have bought several ARM boards and usually Android works very well but traditional Linux desktop sucks on them. I agree that the vendor should at least provide a solid Android implementation. Most of Linux desktop technologies are developed on x86 and solutions that work very well on a $100/- Intel CPU become sluggish on $10/- ARM CPU. Expecting a small hardware vendor form China to fix this is unreasonable.
Regarding the VIM2 link on Gearbest, it’s only for their inside preview, not the true retail price, and the final retail prices will be at:
- VIM2 Basic: $79.99
- VIM2 Pro: $99.99
- VIM2 Max: $119.99
And the promotion price when VIM2 get launched will be lower, the Max model price may be $99.99.
Yes, we did agree that the software ecosystem and rightly technical supporting is the key for SBCs.
As VIM2 also specs with Amlogic SoC(S912) which is same architecture with VIM1(S905X), it means that most of the software developement will be common, for example:
- Ubuntu: both kerner Image, uInitrd, rootfs are same for VIMs and only dts and U-Boot are independent, we are trying to build a ROM to compatible both VIM1 and VIM2.
- Android: same Android SDK
- U-Boot: it’s also possible to develop one build to suit both VIMs.
It means that VIM2 will improve VIM1’s software and also technical support(we did know that importance that sw ecosystem 
, that’s why we didn’t follow on our original planing to develop Khadas Cross(RK3399) first).
Again, thanks for all the feedback from the community!
Thanks @Gouwa for clearing the the price of the vim2, I will definitely be getting a vim2 max was worrieid it would cost $161.00 as stated on GB site. Now I want to say I’m a proud owner of a Vim1 pro and in my opinion I feel khadas has done a reasonably decent job at supporting the vim1. We have several images for the vim and I see the khadas team is constantly improving them I agree that it would be nice to have hardware acceleration but compared to other SBC vendors like the makers of the Orange Pi line that doesn’t support there boards very well or even big corporations like Asus with there tinker board and Debian image that still to this day is still very buggy, I say the khadas team of 3 people have done a great job so far. I think what khadas needs is a bigger community take for example Pine most of the images available are maintained by the community now I still agree that the vendors of these SBC’s sould keep supporting there products. Well just wanted to say thanks to the khadas team for all your hard work and hope khadas keeps growing and also thanks for engaging with the community.
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@Gouwa
just send enough final examples to kernel developer like @narmstrong and Martin Blumenstingl and others and image builder for libreelec @kszaq and @balbes150 and to some testers who proved in past that they do test and report problems, and we could hope they improve Linux support.
I really don’t care about Android nor its development.
just my 2c.
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