I've been looking into alternatives to the Zero 2W because I need something in the same form factor with more (processing) power; something closer to the Pi 3B+

I've been looking into alternatives to the Zero 2W because I need something in the same form factor with more (processing) power; something closer to the Pi 3B+ or better. My conclusion is that although there is some nice hardware out there on paper, the poor circuit designs and atrocious software support mean anything I can get that meets my requirements will be an absolute nightmare; and I'm a software engineer of 1.5-decades with an Electronic Engineering degree, so the bar is high for something to be too-much-effort. Take the Radxa Zero 3W[0] for example; the WiFi doesn't work properly, GPU acceleration doesn't always work, the OS images are out of date and don't always boot, when it does there are power issues, thermal issues, performance issues. No Debian 12 expected until H2 this year, if lucky; Android OS images are Android 9 (we're on what Android 14-15 now?). [0]https://forum.radxa.com/c/zero https://forum.radxa.com/c/zero