[9] The OMAP3530 includes an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU (which can run Linux, Minix,[10] FreeBSD,[11] OpenBSD,[12] RISC OS,[13] or Symbian; a number of unofficial Android ports exist[14][15]), a TMS320C64x+ DSP for accelerated video and audio decoding, and an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX530 GPU to provide accelerated 2D and 3D rendering that supports OpenGL ES 2.0.

[33] The BeagleBone has a Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 720 MHz, 256 MB of RAM, two 46-pin expansion connectors, on-chip Ethernet, a microSD slot, and a USB host port and multipurpose device port which includes low-level serial control and JTAG hardware debug connections, so no JTAG emulator is required.

The miniaturization was made possible by using the Octavo Systems OSD3358-SM that shrinks all major subsystems of the BeagleBone Black into a single ceramic package attached using ball grid array.

The advantages of the miniaturization come at the cost of removal of all built-in connectors except for a single micro USB port, the removal of on-board eMMC flash storage, and a reduction of header pins from 92 down to 72 due to space constraints, meaning that most capes will either not work at all or need heavy modifications to work with PocketBeagle.

Recommended use cases for PocketBeagle include embedded devices where size and weight considerations are most critical, such as quadcopter drones and other miniaturized robotics, along with handheld gaming applications.

The following operating systems are reported to have obtained support for the hardware used on the boards: Fedora, Android (code named rowboat), Ubuntu, Void Linux, openSUSE and Ångström.

The board also supports other OSes such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, QNX, MINIX 3, RISC OS, and Windows Embedded.