I understand that soldering the pi to the circuit board safes space and creates a neat little “all in one” package.
the touch-display is just plugged upon to that - which I find great. even if it breaks it can be swapped out effortlessly.
also recently the pi zero w (with wifi included) has been released.
it would be nice to maybe swap out the pi zero in the future, maybe for an more powerful version.
so have you thought of just making that connection more “pluggable”?
also, the majority of (pi) ports are obstructed by the other components around. I get that in “normal operational mode” that should not be an issue. for troubleshooting it would be nice use the ports normally.
You are absolutely right and I see your point. The decision for this design was primarily to make it small and pretty and even the shortest connectors were adding enough dead height to the already thick enough design.
There was a lot of talk about this and we were thinking of offering a small device with all the parts included (casing etc) and a standalone dev board for more hardcore hackers who would be happy to cover the rest themselves. The dev board would populate much more pins and connectors for most GPIO, USB, HDMI, and camera as well as offering replace-ability. An angled connector was on the table back then. If more people agree on that we will release a dev board suggestion here for people to comment on.