Don’t count detachable Chromebooks out just yet
Google has set up a tall tentpole for ChromeOS and everyone’s been invited under the tarp. Much of the attention has been paid tothe best of the best Chromebooksmeant for professionals and gamers in recent days, but not all new and noteworthy devices require buyers to splash out. We’re hearing about some decent possibilities with a new detachable device based off of a new board design.
FromChrome Unboxed’s recent scans of the Chromium Gerrit, it looks like that board runs off of a yet-to-be-released MediaTek SoC with model number MT8188 — something that slots in the company’s Kompanio series of chipsets targeting Chromebooks, specifically between its “mainstream” 800-series featured in theAcer Chromebook 514and its premium 1000-series as seen on theAcer Chromebook Spin 513 (2H).
In fact, according tothis thread, that slotting is very conspicuously right down the middle with the premium eight-core Kompanio chips featuring four Cortex-A78s and the 800-series going for four Cortex-A76s. The MT8188 is listed with six A55s with a top speed of 2GHz and two A78s maxing out at 2.6GHz.
Chromium developers have suggested that Geralt could be worked into a convertible or detachable tablet form factor and it looks like work is progressing on one such device ifthis commitis to be believed.
Detachables put emphasis on a solid tablet blueprint that’s almost always fanless combined with a keyboard folio that can be tricky to nail down based on precipitating design constraints. There might be a stylus incorporated in as the cherry on top, but usually that’s reserved for the superlative SKU.
Obviously, we’re missing a lot of information that would help us figure out where this lands in terms of brand positioning and pricing. Of Asus, HP, and Lenovo — all of which have put out at least one detachable Chromebook — onlyAsus’s CM3 Detachableruns with a Kompanio chipset; the original Lenovo Duet had a Helio while later entries as well as HP’s have gone with Qualcomm. That said, we’ll have to follow the trail to see what actually happens.
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