OK, then. There are three people applied here. I guess my chance is 2/3 here.
I posted in the other giveaway thread and never heard anything⌠lets hope this giveaway works.
Count me in for one!
4 days left! We will announce the winners on the 25th. Then we will contact 2 winners and send them samples.
Hope the giveaway is true. We shall see.
I agree. I already got the Lemaker sample board which I applied last week. BPI-M3 I applied months ago, still no board. I just hope they can keep their promise.
hikalu, where did you apply?
I meant for your Lemaker board⌠Of course I know you applied here. You are the only one saying random stuff:)
I get a First Share title. Did I win?
Winners of this giveaway are picked by the gleam.io widget.
We have the 2 winners here 
Andrzej Pondel
a***[email protected]
Mary Murphy m***[email protected]
We will contact you shortly to schedule the delivery of the M3. Please note that M3âs are taking a long time to make so you will get it in November.
Thanks for participating everyone!
Just TWO, this is a bit pathetic. I mean you could connect this with an expected review and testing of the device. So you would get cheap ManPower.
At least 10 you could have give a way. Production cost I guess around: USD 26.- plus Shipment with China Post. So for around USD 350.- you could get feedback and help about the development of this device.
just my 2 cents
âDevelopmentâ? They put together a new SoC from Allwinner with some outdated peripherals (like the USB-to-SATA bridge), the product pages are lying (all the weird stuff about âopen source hardwareâ and the M3 has no SATA support, its USB-to-SATA bridge is many times slower than the native SATA implementation of M1/M1+), there are no specs available and on the software side thereâs only a horribly outdated kernel 3.4.39 available from Allwinner.
Where does development happen? In the linux-sunxi community. Remember the situation with Lamobo R1 and the BPi M2 regarding linux distros provided by SinoVoip. None of the stuff worked at the beginning and they prevented the community to jump in since they held back necessary hardware informations. It took months to reverse engineer stuff SinoVoip couldâve provided from the beginning.
They havenât learned a single lesson and the same will happen with the M3 again. But this time the situation is even worse since mainlining work for its A83T SoC is in its earliest stages and far behind the M2âs A31s SoC. Compare with http://linux-sunxi.org/Mainlining_Effort if in doubt (the A83T is mentioned two times while A31/A31s are listed 11 times more).
When will people realize that while many CPU cores might look nice in multithreaded benchmarks that does not necessarily has any meaning for real world performance (where tasks might not be able to be parallelized to the max)? When will people realize that even on an octacora board missing GPU acceleration might prevent any highres video from being played smoothly? When will people realize that a Banana Pi M1 with its native SATA implementation will easily outperform any M2 or M3 that have to rely on USB 2.0? And so onâŚ
Naming those incompatible boards with A31s and now A83T SoC also Banana Pi is just one of the reasons the community around Banana Pi will shrink further 
Totally agree. Kernel is damn old, also HW playback not working.
Because âtheyâ donât develop software. The folks behind all those incompatible Bananas do hardware and just rehash software stuff the linux-sunxi community developed. Itâs really insane but they ship the M3 with OS images running kernel 3.4.39. Weâre on kernel 4.x now, there are tons of unfixed security flaws in this old kernel, so many drivers missing, itâs simply insane. And if you compare with the development of the communityâs 3.4.x kernel: https://github.com/dan-and/linux-sunxi Weâre already on 3.4.110! SinoVoipâs software offers for the M3 are just 71 versions behind
But they simply donât care. They donât give a sht. Same with their âspecsâ. These are marketing bullsht mixed with some informations mixed with wrong copy&paste stuff.
Regarding the M2 in the meantime weâve been able to learn whatâs wrong with their specs http://www.banana-pi.org/m2.html
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âVideo Out: HDMI,CVBS,LVDS/RGBâ â Wrong! The A31s doesnât support composite video so CVBS is a wrong information (every reseller on this planet did copy&paste and customers return their boards but SinoVoip doesnât give a sh*t)
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âPower Source 5V DC via Micro USB or USB OTGâ â Wrong! Theyâre unable to write the real dimensions of their power barrel to their so called âspecsâ and they also refuse to add the information that if the board is powered through USB-OTG then 2 USB ports wonât work. If you want to know anything about a SinoVoip product you have to look whether the community already created a page for it in the linux-sunxi wiki because the manufacturer of the device doesnât give a sht whether the âspecsâ he supplies are wrong or right (theyâve been told numerous times that they should update their specs but they simply donât give a sht).
Same problem with the M3. But since this device is new we donât know how many other so called âspecsâ are plain wrong:
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Power Source: copy&paste of the same bullsh*t that was not true for the M2
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SATA capable: Wrong. Only a crappy USB-to-SATA bridge available with less features and worse performance compared to the Banana Piâs SATA implementation
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USB ports: â2x USB 2.0, 1 USB OTGâ â they donât mention that the SoC has only 3 USB ports and theyâve an internal USB hub with a USB-to-SATA bridge behind
And so on. And everything would be ok if they just learned a bit, behave like a community player, maintain specifications that are worth the name, release informations when available, send their patches upstream so that their hardware will be supported by the mainline kernel automagically sometimes in the future. But what do they do instead? Clone github ressources like crazy, hold back informations, flood this forum with marketing bullsh*t, donât answer user questions and the worst: Call the two totally incompatible boards featuring an A31s and A83T SoC also âBanana Piâ. What a mess
I think in the other post Lion will pick 10 member to gift M3. I think active members around the forum will probably get one, not guaranteeing, I am not the one picking.
O yea, I did reviews with Linux on the M1 and video play back does not work at above 640p. The experience is a bit better on the Android OS, but still Jelly Bean is kind of old.
One thing good about M3 I can guess is running Android on it. USB-SATA is probably super slow, but basic content accessing, downloading, or video playback will work to some extent.
The boards definitely are not super boards, they barely pass as GUI Linux computers. I mostly run Debian on it and build server projects on it.
Giveaway update. The two people did not reply to my email. So as it said in the post, I am updating it with new winners.
Michael Hurt m***[email protected]
Michele Baron a***[email protected]
Will you guys send me a sample? From China with love.
If you get any other cancellations, I would love get an M3 to apply with several industrial mining projects Iâm developing. The extra capability would be perfect to as a âblack boxâ converter between several protocols and Layer 1 networking issues Iâm up against.
Thanks!
Iâm working on video wall and try to convince the investors to use embedded with web browser and some HTML5 technology to display each section of the all image, Since now I try Rpi b+, Rpi II and Banana pi m1, I saw the potential of banana pi m2, but the shipping goes wrong and now Iâm about to re-order. Please, Can I have one I really want to pay for it, because I just need to test the performance with 3.4 kernel and the chosen web browser.
Thank you so much.
Are you kidding us? Michael Hurt? Michele Baron? Sounds like people does not exist. If you are not going to send us samples, at least be honest to tell us the truth. Stop making excuses such as no stock a.t.m., from another thread you told us M3 will be available for sale in a week.