Recently I unfortunately had the power module fail on my pocket, but thanks to the amazing MNT team, not only received a replacement board today, but also received one of the updated backplates with the copper removed from the edges.
Have installed it and the replacement board, and after a couple of weeks Pocketless, am back in action!
Decided to follow some advice from a post @minute made on Mastodon:
some learnings about wifi on pocket reform. it’s really a mix of things that play together:
—avoid display cable near antenna
—avoid copper plane under antenna
—but copper heatsink can also help with reception! (because it mirrors?)
—heatsinking wifi chip doesn’t hurt
—1 antenna can be better than 2
—expensive antennas are mostly not better than simple ones
—direction the antenna is pointing to (towards router or not) has mega impact
—chipsets have a lot of perf differences (qcom/realtek/mtk)
So what I did was:
- Remove one of the antennas (just using the ones that came with the board)
- Stuck the remaining antenna on the opposite side of the backplate to the flex cable (same side as the wifi board), and kept the wire all that side
- Didn’t bother with any heat sync for the wifi card
I’ve been running FreeTube all afternoon, and on the opposite side of the house to our router, and it’s been working perfectly! (even my phone has occasional drop-outs at that distance).
I do think it’s a better setup to the aluminium replacement backplate that I was using previously, although also unsure how much difference the extra antenna and routing away from the flex cable also made. Also afraid I don’t have any scientific measurements - just that it didn’t drop out, and maintained 720p full screen for 3 to 4 hours.
The back of the Pocket did get a fair bit hotter than with the aluminium plate - little hot to the touch, but not awfully alarming at least.