Presumably they will have to test that socket if it is fitted when the Pi 500 motherboard is used in "other contexts".It is indeed about $1 per socket. But I suspect the real cost would be testing that socket. If fitted somebody, or perhaps a robot, would have to plug something into it to check it works before it was fitted into its case.
Intervention like that can become seriously expensive.
I doubt they would test every board by plugging something in. I would expect them to simply check tracks to the socket behave as expected, would consider "socket not working" as an unlikely and acceptable risk. Same as they probably do for the HDMI, USB, Ethernet and other connectors. So nothing needed beyond standard testing. They probably will pull a few off the line to do actual plug-in tests to confirm the failure rate is nil or within acceptable rates.
That's how manufacturing companies I have worked for did it. That seems SOP for consumer product.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Thu Jan 02, 2025 8:38 pm