Challenges

Compared to MCUs, the development challenges of SoCs tend to be far less severe. Some of them are on the level and have an interface where you can even develop directly on the device, even doing compilation cycles on the device without having to do cross-compilation on a PC and copying over the binary. This is also helped by running a full OS instead of developing for the bare hardware.

The obvious disadvantage is that with this increase in features comes an increase in complexity, and the resulting complications, such as having to deal with user accounts, setting permissions, managing device drivers, and so on.