Kicad is the best free EDA I've used and I know many others that use it. The active development and large community make it a no-brainer.
I use Altium professionally ($$$) and I feel like Kicad could cover most of the boards I work on. FYI I've seen a few advanced PCB's done in Kicad successfully - just not sure how much manual calculations/work they had to do.
Kicad + the cheap online PCB vendors are a killer combination.
Kicad has a bunch of examples of boards made with Kicad on their homepage.
Tons of stuff on par with a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black, with DRAM, eMMC, and PCIe routing, plus all the fine pitch placements for supporting circuitry. PMICs get dense in these applications.
Chipset makers, probably correct but there aren't that many companies that make them. Depends on the analogue front end if they support the new frequencies.
I know the 3rd party module makers do tailor their modules to regions and the 'world wide' models can be quite pricey. On the region specific versions they don't include some of the hardware to physically operate on frequencies they don't specify. Sounds crazy, but a few cents here or there is worth running multiple SKU's.
There are probably other issues such as radio compliance and patents that also prevent an upgrade.
The VoLTE upgrade isn't so surprising. For a long time we had 3G/4G modules however the mobile networks didn't support VoLTE so everything would fall back to 3G. Once everyone got their act together, a quick firmware upgrade and VoLTE worked perfectly without adjusting the hardware.
Many of these SoC have HDMI directly from the IC without needing additional hardware converters. Something like DP you need a converter IC which adds expense and board space/complexity. Something like MIPI -> DP, I think TI makes some chipsets that do this.
The size is probably to save space on the board - looks like they try to keep to relatively the same size and mounting holes as previous boards.
I have an entire box of these mini-normal converter cables because of boards like this. OK when messing around but I can see the frustrations if you're not used to it.
You encounter this in older industrial equipment. Some of the old ethernet chipsets don't support automatically switching the pairs around. It's not really a problem since at least in our local area they need to be installed by licensed cablers who are used to dealing with legacy devices.
Many devices won't get updated until chipsets go EOL or there's some other compelling reason to do so.
Having said that, modern chipsets seem to all support it.
One of my earliest experiences with USB was back in the day where I had a PC without any USB front ports that were free. So I grabbed my USB thumb drive and reached around the back of the PC tower and plugged it in without looking.
USB didn't show up in the O/S. Thought maybe it wasn't formatted correctly and went through some diagnostics. Eventually went for the remove it / plug it back in technique. Had a look at the back of the PC and noticed I'd managed to plug it into an empty Ethernet port.... yeah they're about the same width give or take some tolerance. Also usually placed right next to each other.
Back on topic, I do find those bare/exposed usb keys (like a yubikey) to be quite annoying.
Often I see someone who will design something in CAD but not think about how the product will be manufactured. Design for manufacturing isn't a buzzword.
It happens with both plastic and other type of enclosures (metal etc). The better designers understand the manufacturing process and build their designs thinking about how they will be created in a production line. As others have mentioned, most manufacturers will say 'yes' to anything you request and charge accordingly. They'll just figure it out somehow, but you'll be unaware that you've doubled the cost of your part due to a lack of understanding of construction.
I guess it happens in other fields as well, i.e. architects vs builders in the construction industry.
This is solid advice. Find something you're interested in and go from there. If you can't find anything, maybe build something like a weather station. You'll start with a simple task: read the ambient temperature and display it somewhere (on an LCD, in a react app on the cloud etc). You'll then need to start solving problems, like how do you read outside temperature where you'll learn about batteries, wireless technology, water proofing etc.
Don't stress about the electronics and certainly don't be intimidated by text books. When you're starting out you don't need to really know the theory of transistors, but maybe a few youtube videos on the basics won't go astray. Think about if you were learning to code... would you read a book and start stressing about computer architecture? Some people might, but most won't. They'll hit up create-react-app and mess around with that.
When you're learning it's important to get instant feedback. Just learn how to blink an LED and you've completed the hello-world of electronics.
If you can code, you can do electronics. Same for the reverse. The skill sets are closely aligned.
I agree with the parent comments. You will spend an absurd amount of time making library components, and you can't trust 3rd party. The 3rd party sites are a great starting point to take out some of the grunt work, but you need to tweak them.
Your (cad tool) component library is your most valuable resource, and in my opinion more valuable than schematics/layouts. You have your own proven set of components that you know will work in manufacturing. Even the standard passive SMD footprints need to be tweaked for your specific requirements (ISO, design for manufacturing etc).
In regards to Kicad... great tool for 90% of designs. I would say as a rule of thumb, if your design can be manufactured at one of those online, cheap PCB manufacturers (for say, $10-$20) then Kicad will cover it. Once that calculator tool starts going higher you're probably doing someone more complicated that warrants the more expensive tools.
You can get a business account with Mouser/Digikey and then they just become another distributor. Your login gets discounted pricing (it's not much though) which is good for quick prototypes, and you can sometimes get an account manager to negotiate and troubleshoot directly.
I'm not sure how you qualify but you get to the point where you just RFQ to an email address and don't use the webpage. You don't need to be a $million+ purchasing outfit. They'll also schedule orders etc. at least I've seen Mouser do it.
Mouser is quite good on automated notifications - most importantly if anything in your order has changed (99% of the time it's a delivery date). Most of the other distributors do manual back orders in excel.
But their website is filled with annoying quirks. Here's such a basic use case:
1. Bring up a list of items from a search, say 100nF 0402 caps.
2. Sort by price low -> high (you'll see the icon, click that it'll work)
3. Now type in a quantity of say 100000 and find the best price on this part... yes the icon disappears when you fill in the quantity input field.
Download the CSV doesn't give price breaks.
Amusingly I just went to the digikey website which implements this functionality and.... something is broken. Can't even apply a quantity to a search. Also getting some strange loading page with a countdown clock... anti bot?
I use Altium professionally ($$$) and I feel like Kicad could cover most of the boards I work on. FYI I've seen a few advanced PCB's done in Kicad successfully - just not sure how much manual calculations/work they had to do.
Kicad + the cheap online PCB vendors are a killer combination.