I'm not sure why it would need a touch screen or a customized OS on it raspbian works fine.(remote desktop works well for me but 12.99 isn't that bad.)
They just need to reduce the memory usage of the wallet by stripping it down to its bare essentials no bells or whistles like showing exchange prices.
Current NAv wallet is a huge memory hog that takes over 1gb of memory if they can cut that down to half or less that would be great then it would also run on Pi1 not just Pi2.(ive asked for this in the past I'm glad its finally happening)
Quite a interesting theme, I have tried to divide the subjects into,
the first relating to the software, the second relating to hardware.
Sorry for the flooding.
I think the main problem are not the accessory function of the wallet,
those consuming few resources, but the problem lies in the structure of
the data of blockchain, and how it is stored and managed internally.
As an example, the QT wallet after a while, takes up about 840MB
of memory, and had reached the peak of 1.1GB.
But even the simple daemon just launched alone occupies as well 1GB
of RAM on a desktop system.
This significant memory footprint, I think it is mainly due the blockchain,
which in recent months due to the acceleration of which I spoke too much,
was blown out of proportion.
Theoretically, one day should produce 2,880 new blocks of NAV,
and in one year 1,051,200, but instead we are currently already more
than 2,546,663.
The DevTeam may make some changes, some minor optimizations, but
the blocks are there, they are part of the ledger, and they have to
stay, they can not vanish [1].
Unless miracles, I do not think that a reduction of use of memory, can
not get to 50% as you hoped.
This problem of excessive memory consumption, sooner or later would come
in each case, for example also other wallet relatively older than ourselves
but who have the same common roots, like Hobonickel or Tek, start having the
same problem.
We're going on before them, because in a few weeks of real time,
we burned almost a year of blockchain.
Some time ago I read that some Dev of some other currencies, had the
intention of try to make some tweaks in order to reduce the memory footprint,
I do not know if they have continued or have they had other commitments,
but I do not envy them because it must be a difficult job, because are working
on the backbone of the wallet, and this is a common skeleton to many coin.
If everyone had news about this, please let us know.
IMHO the best thing would be that the Dev allied themselves in an common
effort for redesign the backbone of the wallet, but my impression is that
this alliance is a difficult thing.
I think something can be done to reduce the use of CPU, and continuous
access to blockchain data during the staking, for example by inhibiting
the staking for the first few seconds after a new block, or by making use
of some of cache to store some information internally.
However generally this type of solution leads to occupy more memory, and
then we return again to the problem than before.
[1]
There would be another type of radical solution which could be taken, but I think
I would come buried by the insults, if I only tried to indicate it.