These boards confuse me so much. The microcontroller is a Renesas RA4M1 running at 48MHz. However, the Wifi version uses an Espressif S3 module. However the S3 is a dual core microcontroller that runs up to 240 MHz. Why not base the board on that, or perhaps even the RISC-V version of ESP32? ESP32 has plenty of pins, deep sleep, etc.
Is it only to keep pinout/5V compatibility with older Unos? I think their bigger problem is that there are a lot of good competitors now and their boards are severely overpriced for what they offer.
Exactly my thought, this seems like a bunch of design compromises mostly towards backwards-compatibility, but I suspect they also did not want to make their flagship product reliant on a chinese MCU, hence the no-wifi variant.
A low-power ARM MCU like that can run for years. There are wireless sensors based on TI's wireless ARM Cortex-M3 solutions that can run for years before needing a battery replacement.
if they weren't going to keep compatibility, there would be no point in going with the same form factor (and they could fix the awkward spacing that one of the headers has) - this is meant as something that will work with the various shields that are available.
Is it only to keep pinout/5V compatibility with older Unos? I think their bigger problem is that there are a lot of good competitors now and their boards are severely overpriced for what they offer.