19 ms·

Pinetab – 10.1″ Linux Tablet with Detached Backlit Keyboard

274 points by reddotX 6y ago

slantyyz 6y ago
I noticed this has a removable battery, which makes this very interesting to me. What I'd like to know is if it will work with the battery compartment empty on AC power only. I'd like to have "smart" displays wall mounted around the house with dashboards on them. I've read about so many instances where people used wall mounted iPads and Android tablets where the batteries would swell after a period of use.
- zlalanne 6y ago
  Yep, this was the first thing I thought of. Hoping to do the same thing.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > What I'd like to know is if it will work with the battery compartment empty on AC power only. The Pinebook laptops can work without a battery while connected to AC, but not out of the box. A simple hardware mod is necessary to enable this, that's documented by Pine.
  - pinfisher 6y ago
    That is unusual. I have never had a laptop that would not work without a battery present.
    - JadeNB 6y ago
      MBPs at some point switched to drawing power faster than it could be provided by the plug alone. Of course, you can't tell nowadays whether laptops will work without a battery, because most batteries are non-removeable.
      - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        I don't think I've ever seen that behavior with a MacBook Pro of any vintage -- and I've had an MBP of one stripe or another since at least 2007, using the date of the 2007 MacBook Pro gathering dust bunnies nearby -- except when I use the wrong power supply with it, e.g., a 13" MBP power supply with a 15" one, or my MacBook Air's power supply with any MBP now. I wouldn't doubt it's possible to draw more power than the adapter can give you if you're pushing the MBP full-bore, but I'm pretty sure that under normal power loads, this doesn't happen.
        Rebelgecko 6y ago
        I suspect that this is the reason why MBPs now refuse to boot on low battery. You used to be able to start up the machine when your battery was at 0% (as long as you were plugged in), but newer MBPs complain and don't boot up until you recharge to 10% or so.
        jki275 6y ago
        They just bumped the power adapter on the 2019 MBP up a little bit. I've seen people say that if they max all cores and leave it that way it will drain the battery even if it's plugged in. I haven't attempted that, and I've never seen the behavior under any other circumstance.
        anthonyskipper 6y ago
        Try mining cryptocurrency, running prime95, playing fps shooters, or even dota on high settings. You will notice the battery draining while plugged in. You also see it if you are on an airplane, but that is usually because the charger tries to pull too much and overheats and gives up ghost. Macbooks have underpowered chargers.
        djrogers 6y ago
        > Macbooks have underpowered chargers. My 16” shipped with a 96 watt charger, and I’ve not seen a laptop with a higher powered one. I’d have to contend with that assertion.
    - eurg 6y ago
      Lenovos etc. don't care, but I've seen this first hand with some Acer and Asus laptops. It has nothing to do w/peak power consumption, that is a wholly different problem, of a different class of devices.
      - calvinmorrison 6y ago
        some Lenovo devices do throttle though. If you do not have a battery and are using the 65W not 90W lenovo chargers on an X220, it will throttle your power.
    - fencepost 6y ago
      I have a couple of old ThinkPads that work but seem to throttle heavily, I've attributed it to need for better burst draw handling. Also one of their older W models that will only run on battery if a standard 90W power supply is connected and will only charge the battery if the device is off. Running on external power is only supported with the 135W or (stock) 170W PSU.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      It’s really not, especially for high end models if you are stressing your hardware and it’s not an awfully thermally limited design you’ll drain the battery even when you are connected to the charger. You have 60W chargers usually for systems with max power draw of the CPU+GPU that can reach around 200W peak and in the mid to high 1XXW sustained if you have a DTR/high-performance “mobile” CPU + dGPU. Even if your laptop comes with a 90W charger it’s still a problem because it’s not enough to power a 65W series H CPU and a high end GPU that draws another 80-120W. Most laptops will always use the battery directly and trickle charge it due to the power draw. Power(hungry)ful modern gaming/DTR style laptops can use both concurrently, heck older gaming laptops used to come with multiple power supplies that were needed simply because even the battery wasn’t enough at the time to serve as a buffer, so you had to plug in 2 power adapters to power the laptop fully. Even without this constraint having a single power path is cheaper and simpler to design so most manufacturers just only draw from the battery and have a separate charging circuit that charges it without having to add power balancing and switching circuitry. IBM thinkpads used to advertise that you can switch the battery while the laptop was plugged into the charger most laptops of that period didn’t support this either. If you go even further it was even more of a headache because older laptops used LiPo batteries which were even more finicky.
      - exikyut 6y ago
        > older gaming laptops used to come with multiple power supplies Some curious digging found two examples (with pictures): https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/2612-why-2-power-adapters-for-the-msi-dual-gtx-1080-laptop https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/2612-why-2-power-adapter... https://hothardware.com/reviews/dell-alienware-area-51m-review-and-benchmarks https://hothardware.com/reviews/dell-alienware-area-51m-revi...
    - myself248 6y ago
      That's unusual for modern machines. It was de rigeur from the first portables up to about 2005, as I recall. I was rudely surprised by my first Core 2-era machine that wouldn't boot without a battery installed, because prior to that, from Pentium-based Toughbooks back to the 486-based Noteflex back to various 8088 and even pre-x86 machines (PC8201A, club100 represent!), they were all absolutely fine running from the power inlet alone with no battery. The Zenith MiniSport was the sole exception because the power jack was actually physically on the battery, but you could still gut an old dead battery and make a dummy, and it would run from the brick just fine. (This is documented in the very first issue of Brian Mork's excellent Minisport Laptop Hacker zine, available wherever fine textfiles are sold.)
- comboy 6y ago
  I went with raspberry pi + LCD. Even though there are many LCD options I recommend going with their official pi touch display, it just works without headaches. I did use their official enclosure, but it doesn't really seem to be well designed for wall mount (some 3d printing and magnets helped). I think going with an android tablet is fine and headache free. I just don't like aesthetics of that solution.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    > I think going with an android tablet is fine and headache free. The problem with many tablets is that leaving them plugged can cause batteries to swell, which can end up being a huge headache. I've heard stories of offices that used iPads as wall mounted displays having this problem, so I don't think any particular make or model is immune to this issue. I considered Pi+Monitor, but for me, something like the Pinetab is a cleaner, simpler solution. And at $99 without the keyboard, that's a pretty decent price.
    - Raphael_Amiard 6y ago
      > I considered Pi+Monitor, but for me, something like the Pinetab is a cleaner, simpler solution. And at $99 without the keyboard, that's a pretty decent price. Of course you should go for what is easier for you, and the pinetab does sound easier, however I'd argue that it is not cleaner. Separating the screen and main unit will allow for a more serviceable solution, changing either piece if it breaks, or upgrading the main unit if you need more power/different connectivity.
- bigiain 6y ago
  > I've read about so many instances where people used wall mounted iPads and Android tablets where the batteries would swell after a period of use. Made that mistake myself. I now have a wall mounted iPad with the charger plugged into a timer powerpoint that only switches on for 1hr a day. Been running like that for 5+ years now without issue. (I'd planned for that to just be a proof of concept, and to use a wifi powerpoint that'd turn on when the battery dropped to 20% and back off where it hit 80%. The easy solution has turned out to be "good enough" and has remained in production, like that cronjob perl script from 2004...)
  - throwaway41597 6y ago
    Really cool! Could you give specifics about the typical low and high of the battery cycle, please? (from XX% to XX%).
    - bigiain 6y ago
      I'd been intending to aim for 20%-80% cycles, because I read that's "good for lithium batteries". The timer switch I grabbed to do my proof of concept only has 15min resolution (it's a weird old mechanical one where you move plastic pins in the stop/start time rings). I recall setting it to 45mins because the docs says the iPad gets 80% charge in 1 hour, and it'd occasionally run down and switch off, so I bumped it up to 1hr and haven't touched it since. I just checked now, it charged for an hour overnight finishing ~10.5 hours ago, and is currently saying 59% charge. I honestly have no idea how low or high the charge level gets, just that I haven't needed to wake it back up from a shutdown in over 4 years... I've come to doubt the details there are important. Don't leave it on charge 24x7, that'll kill it fairly quickly (~9 months in one data point of mine). Charge it long enough and regularly enough to keep it running, but at the low end of that spectrum. Keep in mind my goal here is less "extend the life of the battery", and more " prevent the battery from swelling up and damaging the device/catching fire", but I suspect there's a fair bit of crossover between those goals, since I've not needed to increase the charge time in response to any battery capacity decrease over 5 years (which in retrospect surprises me somewhat). If I was aiming to maintain the best possible range in an electric vehicle, I'd probably pay much more attention to max charge and min discharge levels, but "the simplest possible thing" has been working well enough for me to just leave it alone. If it dies on me tomorrow, I'll be happy enough with the use I got out of it and the tradeoff of time I spent futzing with it. (Note: I'm also quite familiar with abusing LiPo batteries way past safe limits, I raced FPV quadcopters 5-6 years back, and in my worst excesses, I'd be aiming to completely drain a flight pack in ~2 minutes. They'd end up too hot to touch, and start to decline to the point of not being race competitive within 20 or 25 cycles. They'd also catch into unextinguishable fire in big crashes and occasionally while charging. I have a healthy fear/respect of high capacity and high current LiPo batteries...)
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
How is touch screen on linux these days, I'm probably pick one up but can't imagine running UBports on 2GB ram. I would rather use i3/lighter DE + touch screen support for some GUI apps?
- ipnon 6y ago
  Here's a demo of UBports Ubuntu on the Pinephone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ne6G0-hn9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ne6G0-hn9g
  - fsflover 6y ago
    A more recent demo, much smoother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8
- boogies 6y ago
  Someone's set up a sort of dwm-based DE on the Pinephone: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/ https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/
  - floren 6y ago
    Thanks for this, this looks almost exactly like what I want in a Linux phone. I've found DEs like phosh far, far too heavy for the Pinephone.
  - exikyut 6y ago
    http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfeatures.mp4 http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfe... (MP4) ...well that was... interesting...
ssivark 6y ago
The Pine folks have been doing fantastic work over the last several years. Does anyone know of ways to support them other than buying products? I don’t really need these gadgets right now, and don’t have the time to tinker, but want to encourage the ecosystem from a long-term perspective. For example, I’d love to give them some money and become a long-term member/shareholder/something. I don’t really care for the rate of return; I’m more interested in a reason to stay engaged with the organization as its products might mature into my use cases, and help them along the way.
- xnyan 6y ago
  One suggestion, buy a product for someone who could use it but doesn’t have the resources. As a kid who loved to tinker and had no money this would have meant the world to me at that time.
  - j05h 6y ago
    Was thinking the same...school donations maybe?
    - Vinnl 6y ago
      Many libraries also have programs for children interested in tech, might be good to check with a local one.
  - ssivark 6y ago
    I know what you mean; I was in a similar situation growing up. One very unfortunate phenomenon among most of the kids I see today is that they are so swamped by “structured” activities that they have no time to “tinker” for the heck of it. They feel pressured that all their time ought to show returns on their resume/exams/applications/etc :-/ I would love to enable a few kids and engage with them so I might at least vicariously get some of the fun of tinkering.
  - renegading 6y ago
    I think Pine sells their products at cost so that won't benefit them directly.
awinter-py 6y ago
would love to know what the model is that lets these penetrate the mass market I buy mine because I'll jump through any hoop to not carry around a fortune 500 in my pocket For the consumer market -- runnability of android? hardware quality? low price? Some compatibility factor that only an open company can hit?
boogies 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6lAjgfW3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6lAjgfW3c If this functionality was demoed by Apple on a new $999 "MacPad Pro" there would be arguments over if it was the end of the PC and the beginning of the next generation of computing, a leap like the smartphone revolution. Edits: price, s/this/this functionality/ I took this out of context (sorry), it's a very pre-production device that has received a lot of work since then and will receive much more. https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-orders-pinephone-qi-charging-more/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-ord...
- KuiN 6y ago
  It's really cool, but my main takeaway from that video was multi-second input lag and you can see several times when he's dragging things around the computer doesn't do what he's expecting. It's a cool tech demo but I don't see how it's going to change the world like that.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Agreed. I think Apple would have made a device with maybe 4 times the specs (eg. 8 Gb RAM instead of 2) and ten times the price (edited the parent to reflect that) and kept it top secret until right before release. There's still hope that this will eventually be polished to perfection, but it will probably take years of revisions.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Meh, I don't know. It looks clunky in lots of ways, the GNOME3 UX feels a lot cleaner and more intuitive. Hopefully future GNOME versions will be able to run usefully on 2GB RAM. Or perhaps MATE and Xfce will adopt some of the same touch-friendly interaction principles.
- deergomoo 6y ago
  Are we watching the same video? This is basically no different to what you get on any Windows convertible (though the tablet-mode interactions are closer to the iPad), except way, way jankier.
wpietri 6y ago
Very interesting! I've been looking for cheap wall-mountable touchscreens so I can have permanent, single-purpose interfaces and displays. For example, I have a KanbanFlow board to track my work, and I use an old tablet mounted to the wall next to my standing desk. I was thinking I'd get cheap Android tablets and root them, but I'd much rather support something where it's built for user control from the beginning.
- jcun4128 6y ago
  Side thought... is it even cheaper if you just have displays/use an ESP to do http requests to a local server... guess depends what they have to do. I mean I think you would need a 32 to drive the display too vs. just an ESP01
  - slim 6y ago
    I don't think they're capable of displaying a web page
    - folmar 6y ago
      Depends on the webpage, but the you can always render server-side
    - jcun4128 6y ago
      Oh maybe I didn't read parent comment thoroughly enough I was talking about having a UI with defined buttons you click and it sends the http request. Yeah missed the Kanban part
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Dollar cheaper perhaps, but not time cheaper for me. I just want an easy place to display web pages and web apps.
    - jcun4128 6y ago
      Yeah that's true, it took me a long time to figure out how to flash my ESP01 haha
julianlam 6y ago
This is interesting to me because I'm in the market for a new tablet. Is this more of a hacker device (IR blaster, odd assortment of ports, full OS, etc.) or consumer? It should ideally pass the wife test...
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Not a ton of ports, USB 2.0 Type-A and Micro-B, Micro-HDMI out, SD card. But there's an expansion card slot, which is pretty unheard of for a tablet. So you can add like an SSD or a LoRa radio or what-have-you.
- hsitz 6y ago
  It doesn't sound like this is for you. If "wife test" means the wife using and it and liking it, pretty sure it would fail. It's not what this is marketed for. An Amazon Kindle tablet would be more what you're looking for, if this is the price point you want.
- igorbark 6y ago
  the mild sexism wasn't necessary
  - julianlam 6y ago
    What mild sexism? I want a tablet that my wife will use to browse the web and watch videos, and she will be evaluating it's fitness for her daily use. It's literally exactly what I said.
    - exikyut 6y ago
      (The "flag" option can be found by clicking the post submit date.)
    - bchanudet 6y ago
      I think it's because "wife test" looks a lot like "wife acceptance factor" [1], which has a much more degrading meaning than what you wanted to convey. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor
iicc 6y ago
The link (store page) is unresponsive. The webpage for the product is https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/
- dang 6y ago
  It seems to be working now, just slowly.
JustSomeNobody 6y ago
Pricing Details: The PineTab – $99.99 The magnetic backlit keyboard – $19.99 That's interesting. I love my iPad mini 5, but at this price I may have to pick one of these up.
- duxup 6y ago
  Yeah for non iPad specific stuff ... just reading and streaming this might be way more cost effective.
SPQT 6y ago
I'd rather get second hand iPad.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  An iPad can't do things that this does; in particular, any pine product gives you full control the device and the ability to execute arbitrary code.
- Darmody 6y ago
  The point of this device is precisely being able to move away from iPads/Android tablets. I'm tired of not being able to uninstall Dropbox because Samsung doesn't want me to.
chrismorgan 6y ago
I suppose the keyboard needs to be attached to operate? I use a Surface Book. I’ve been interested to discover that I would quite often like to have the keyboard continue to work after detaching the base, because when drawing on the device a keyboard is still useful for switching between tools, activating things, typing in precise values when necessary, &c. To be sure, a large part of this is just that I’m using apps that haven’t been optimised for keyboardless usage (I’m talking things like Krita, Inkscape, OpenToonz), but even if they were, a keyboard would still be useful. As it stands, I’d need to buy a second keyboard, one that worked by Bluetooth, to achieve this goal. (In the particular case of the Surface Book, detaching the base isn’t quite as useful as you might imagine, because ¾ of the battery life is in it, so you’ll get ~3h at most, <2h if using it much.)
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  It's got pogo pins, it looks likely to just be a pogo pin USB port down there? Pretty sure they'd mention if the keyboard was wireless. Honestly, I hate having a second battery to worry about charging: I'd much rather a keyboard just be a keyboard.
- Lex-2008 6y ago
  yes, keyboard is attached via pogo pins (which actually are just USB), but tablet also has a "normal" USB port where you can just insert any plain USB keyboard. source: https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ ("Learn More About It!" link at the bottom goes to forum post from 2019)
jandrese 6y ago
They are serious about not making profit with these. $100 for a full up tablet and it includes the keyboard/touchpad? 2GB of RAM is pretty limiting but 64GB of storage is quite respectable at this price point. The 6AH battery pack is quite beefy too.
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  "When fulfilling the purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the PineTab at this price as a community service to PINE64 communities. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the PineTab. Thank you." no or low amounts of QA significantly reduce cost
  - goda90 6y ago
    They do have some QA. My Pinebook Pro is in good shape hardware wise. Arstechnica reported that because of the pandemic their QA has been terrible lately(switched factories, not able to come onsite for QA training and such).
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    With regards to dead pixels, every vendor I know of has terms like this, it's just hidden in the warranty small print, not on the store page: https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/ht035306 https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/ht035306 https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/05/leaked_apple_dead_pixel_policy_allows_two_for_ipad_none_fir_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/05/leaked_apple_dead...
    - squarefoot 6y ago
      I wonder what are the odds of finding dead pixels today. I saw lots of them in the past, and in a few cases they were really nasty to stand (imagine a pixel stuck at full brightness in the center of a screen mostly containing dark terminals) , but admittedly in the last 10 years or so I can't remember of a single one. However, although all vendors bury the dead pixel disclaimer, being so open about it makes one wonder if their quality checks are cheaper than others. I would happily pay more to be 100% sure there are no dead pixels btw.
drcongo 6y ago
I have no idea what I'd do with one of these, but that price point is barely more than a Raspberry Pi 4 with a few accessories. I think I might buy one.
foo2020 6y ago
2GB ram seems to be pretty limiting.
Maha-pudma 6y ago
Is that a 30 day warranty? No thanks.
- jagger27 6y ago
  The dead pixel disclaimer bothers me too, but at this price point you really can't argue.
  - fenwick67 6y ago
    Even most middle-road laptops, monitors and phones have these disclaimers in the warranties AFAIK.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      This amazes me. You could literally spend 2 grand on a machine and still be told its ok for it to be defective out of the box.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        Well, if it's a high-res display then there's a lot more pixels so a greater chance of failure. I actually really like this system and wish that I could trade-off further down the spectrum on quality. After all, to get a zero-dead-pixel device you just have to check in the second-hand market like people do for high-binned CPUs. The volume of true demand for those CPUs is high enough that there are retailers like Silicon Lottery that explicitly look out for that. It turns out that most consumers don't really want a zero-dead-pixel guarantee though.
        michaelmrose 6y ago
        >It turns out that most consumers don't really want a zero-dead-pixel guarantee though. Alternatively they just buy their displays from brick and mortar companies that allow you to return for any reason at all and just return for replacement any device that has any number of dead pixels. I've never bought a display that had any number of defective pixels in almost 3 decades of using computers I'm betting lots of people are in the same boat. Logically the price is built into whatever such places are selling them for based on some percentage of users returning anything with any number of dead pixels.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I bought one. The USB configuration sounds a bit sad. USB 2.0 Type-A and Micro-B is a very dated configuration, especially considering the PinePhone has a USB-C. But I am interested in seeing how the ecosystem comes together and the price is absolutely right for this thing.
tvb12 6y ago
Wow, Pine64 has a really beautiful logo.
mahesh_rm 6y ago
Does it run vscode?
- 11c1d5c57446 6y ago
  Does it run emacs?
- Johnnynator 6y ago
  Sure it does, the question is only how good the experience is on such a low power device.
jjice 6y ago
Absolutely incredible for the $120 price point. If they release a PineTab Pro in the future with 4 (or dare I say 8GB) of ram, I'd be all over it. At that point, I could really start to be productive. 2GB is a bit limiting for the modern web unfortunately, but there is a ton of potential here. I'm considering buying one to use as my main machine for this next year at Uni. Taking notes in VS Code/Vim would be fine, but I could see some of my course load being hindered by the ram. As a portable SSH machine, a kid's first computer, or a nice portable machine with a screen for hobby projects, I think this will be fantastic.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I would jump at buying an 8gb model.
- buckhx 6y ago
  More RAM and USB-C and will 100% purchase
  - noir_lord 6y ago
    For me it would be a higher res screen, I'm find anything less than 1920x1080 at 10.1" jarring because of my astigmatism it gives me headaches.
- als0 6y ago
  > 2GB is a bit limiting for the modern web unfortunately This saddens me...
  - popped 6y ago
    Yea that's kind of insane isn't it? I wish there was a lite version of the Web with enforced resource constraints
    - MagnumOpus 6y ago
      There is - you can just install NoScript to block all scripts and stop video autoplay in Firefox setting. Presto - a slim web. (Sites that need JS often have a slim alternative - there are superfast "lite" or "mobile" sites for GMail, Reddit, Facebook and many more.)
rewsiffer 6y ago
Wow, I was ready to pull the trigger on this until I saw the $30 shipping.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  They don't subsidize anything here, so yeah, cost of shipping is really the cost to take a box from China to your house, pretty much. FWIW, when I got my PineBook Pro, DHL was literally like overnight from Hong Kong to the US. I think if you consider it part of the cost ($150 for tablet and keyboard shipped), it's still a pretty good deal.
  - rewsiffer 6y ago
    Yeah, good point. Maybe I am just conditioned to subsidized free shipping from China.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      That's going to end. The UPU agreed to let the US charge 70% of its domestic shipping cost to foreign carriers.
jareds 6y ago
Does anyone know if there custom OS has a screen reader? I'm totally blind and this is priced at the point where I'd like to play with it assuming it's usable for me.
- coolspot 6y ago
  I would love to give you a definite answer, but only way to know for sure is to test yourself. PineTab can run any ARM OS, so you can install one that you have positive experience with. These OSes are touch-optimized and recommended: UBPorts (community-driven Ubuntu Touch) postmarketOS Arch Linux ARM I know that desktop Ubuntu has screen reader (Orca) installed by default. No sure about Ubuntu Touch. My Google-fu shows very outdated answers.
  - folmar 6y ago
    You should be able to run a standard Ubuntu if you don't aim for touch-driven interaction; @jareds - do you?
- exikyut 6y ago
  Wow, what an interesting question. Open source first-class accessible tinkerer/maker-oriented hardware design. That gets me wondering... what would be the ideal here? I don't have much experience with blind-oriented usage but I get the impression blind users only keep screens around for when software/the OS falls apart and orientational cues completely break down... but perhaps sighted assistance is needed less often than I presume, and blind users simply use phones and laptops with screens because that's what dominates the market. Maybe you could viably get away with having a quick-access mechanism that lets someone use their own device's display whenever assistance is required. I can totally see a device that serves VNC over HTML5 to any web browser via a built-in hotspot, that would be pretty universal. Which leads me to the question of how useful touchscreen gestures are - since that's all touchscreens are useful for in a blind context - and if there isn't a better input method than that. I get the impression keyboards are pretty much "it". It would be pretty cool if your entire computer was a keyboard with a 3.5mm headphone jack :) The Pinetab is basically a highish-end ARM system with its own bits of novel hardware added on, so the base question becomes "how usable is the mainline AArch64 Linux experience for blind users?". I suspect it's somewhere between "poor" and "fair"; and bespoke hardware in this device may add a small amount of extra strain on top of that. Now I'm puzzling over which mechanical keyboards are the thinnest, and if you could cram a power bank and ARM development board into the footprint space underneath.
Sir_Substance 6y ago
I've been waiting for this to come out. Unfortunately, I tried to buy the pinetime late last year and discovered they only sell through paypal and you need an account to make the payment, you can't just pay by credit card. If there's anyone from pine watching: Please, add a normal credit card option. Paypal is a horrid company. I'm prepared to pay directly with a credit card via them, but I _will not_ make an account with them just to buy your stuff. Please let me give you money without making a legal agreement with a third party :(
- rossvor 6y ago
  You don't need a paypal account to pay by credit card via paypal. Select "Pay by Debit or Credit Card" when it asks you to login to paypal.
  - Sir_Substance 6y ago
    That option is enabled or disabled by the user. Pine has (still) not enabled it: https://i.imgur.com/Y1OhCkX.png https://i.imgur.com/Y1OhCkX.png In case anyone from pine is watching, here's the doc on how to do it: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payments/guest-payments/ https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payment... It's like....5 clicks.
    - rossvor 6y ago
      Interesting, it's enabled for me -- that's how I bought it -- without creating an account. Maybe this feature is perhaps region locked somehow? I'm in UK. EDIT: it is indeed gated by some vague heuristics[1]. >Buyers don't always have the option to complete their purchases without using or creating a PayPal account. This option is presented based on several risk factors, including but not limited to the buyer's PayPal purchase history, PayPal cookies stored on the buyer's computer, the buyer's location, or a credit assessment. [1] https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-accept-credit-cards-with-express-checkout-using-the-guest-checkout-option-ts1623 https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-accept-...
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.vn/Lm8EA https://archive.vn/Lm8EA
- zachberger 6y ago
  I get certificate invalid here..
  - fenwick67 6y ago
    Invalid cert, and then after temporarily allowing, I get a 403.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Try: https://archive.today/Lm8EA https://archive.today/Lm8EA https://archive.is/Lm8EA https://archive.is/Lm8EA https://archive.fo/Lm8EA https://archive.fo/Lm8EA https://archive.li/Lm8EA https://archive.li/Lm8EA https://archive.vn/Lm8EA https://archive.vn/Lm8EA https://archive.md/Lm8EA https://archive.md/Lm8EA https://archive.ph/Lm8EA https://archive.ph/Lm8EA One typically works. List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today Cloudflare is in a grudge match with archive.today: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
    - tomxor 6y ago
      All invalid certs/403, even google webcache is 404ing, how elusive...
benbojangles 6y ago
I'm thinking a portable SDR setup
pengaru 6y ago
Meanwhile coming up on a month of waiting for my ubports pinephone to arrive... Not even a shipping update yet.
- ricecake 6y ago
  Uhhh yeah they have https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942
  - pengaru 6y ago
    I purchased directly from their web store, not via a forum group buy or other means. They have my contact information, and I have not received a single peep to inform me on the status of my purchase. Just radio silence. If I'm expected to go root out some forum thread to monitor progress on things I purchase from the pine64 store, that's worth noting here to inform everyone's expectations.
    - ricecake 6y ago
      You said they didn't give a shipping update. They did. Doesn't matter if you don't like they way that they did so.
      - tpxl 6y ago
        They gave a shipping update to forum users/readers. I have also not received an update since ordering on 11th of May. Like the parent said, an e-mail would be nice, they have it.
      - pengaru 6y ago
        They didn't give me a shipping update. They could post a shipping update on the wall of their local laundromat for all the good that did me when I'm not monitoring their message forums. If not for this thread, I'd still be operating in the dark having basically forgotten I even bought the thing. I appreciate your comment pointing me at the forum, pine64 should have emailed that link to everyone who ordered one in the affected time period.
axegon_ 6y ago
I am not going to lie, I'm not a big fan of the arm experience on Linux. While the situation has improved, it is still a painful experience. It has always felt like you're trying to run windows 7 on a pentium II, regardless of lightweight desktop environments or even no desktop environment. That said, this does look like a very appealing solution for something to shove in the backpack when hiking or whatnot, as opposed to carrying around a 1.5k ultrabook. I'll keep an eye out and wait for some review and real-world experiences and I might jump on that train.
- imprettycool 6y ago
  Isn't the issue just drivers?
bArray 6y ago
Just purchased one, very excited. Looking forward to it arriving sometime in August. My use case is basic browsing, taking notes in meetings, reviewing papers (using something like xournal), SSH'ing into remote machines, a small amount of dev'ing (compiling on remote) and perhaps presentations (has HD output). I travel alot and having a machine that doesn't break my back would be cool. If the keyboard is half-way decent I may even use it for writing too. The reason for this device over other existing solutions are many: low price, built for Linux, lightweight, low-power (good battery), form factor (where did you go netbooks :( ) and a great community!
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
I've got an old windows tablet with similar specs, old intel atom, 2GB ram. (linx1010b) Its gathering dust because its so underpowered, could not find a use for it as a GUI user device. I think some kind of kiosk / iot hub with display application could work, if you put in the effort.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Newer Linux releases generally work quite well on these tablets as far as hardware support goes. The one thing that's marginally underpowered is the amount of RAM, and in my experience 2GB still suffices for simple use cases.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
So they wrapped some clam-shell around their SOPINE A64 COMPUTE MODULE? [1] https://store.pine64.org/?product=sopine-a64 https://store.pine64.org/?product=sopine-a64 [2] https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine Looks like Resterampe/left-over sale to me. Come on, 2GB? In 2020?
mattlondon 6y ago
If this had USB-C for charging I'd be really interested and would purchase. I can live with the rest of the specs. I know USB-C has a bad rep but it is honestly just amazing having one charger that does everything. I don't want to regress from that
veridies 6y ago
This looks wonderful, and I bought it as soon as preorders opened; I'd love to have a Linux tablet to read books on and take to work (I'm a teacher, not a programmer). It definitely is pretty low-powered, though, and I'd appreciate a higher-end alternative. Is there any Windows-based tablet that you can reliably and easily install Linux on?
- ddevault 6y ago
  >Is there any Windows-based tablet that you can reliably and easily install Linux on? Samsung Series 7 Slate XE700T1A
  - shmerl 6y ago
    Are there any tablets that have open drivers for GPU and touchscreen? Problem with blobs is that such tablets are forever stuck with ancient kernels.
    - ddevault 6y ago
      The one I mentioned works fine with the upstream kernel for everything. It just has an Intel GPU.
      - shmerl 6y ago
        Good to know, thanks!
- lasftew 6y ago
  The first generation Surface Go works very well, except for the cameras, which are not supported.
pathartl 6y ago
I love what Pine is trying to do, but man those A53 CPUs and Mali-400 GPUs are really pretty crummy. Similarly spec'd Allwinner chips were on the PlayStation Classic and Nintendo Classic microconsoles.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  Those were running emulators though, running native software will be more efficient.
  - pathartl 6y ago
    The community has ported a bunch of native stuff and it still performs poorly.
mjcohen 6y ago
Took me quite a while, but I finally got my order in. It'll come, eventually, I hope.
dmitrygr 6y ago
Cortex-A53 is a very slow in-order core. Think Pentium 1 -level IPC. Eg: it can dispatch at most one multiplication, and will stall the entire pipeline for a few cycles if you try another one soon after. I doubt this is going to perform well
- rbanffy 6y ago
  OTOH, no speculative execution side channels.
gorgoiler 6y ago
The further I get with computers the less I need. I’ve been teaching computer graphics using a 160 x 48 pixel display rendering Unicode Braille dots. It’s absolutely enough for: - random colored text - line drawing fun - circles - z buffers - convex hulls - ray tracing spheres (Checkerboards are too noisy though, and no Newell teapots. Alas, if only my browser supported PBM, the graphics format of winners.) So yeah, bring it on! Doing more with less feels like a journey worth traveling. I want one!
- wltprgm 6y ago
  May I know what's that 160 x 48 display and processor you are using to teach? I am interested to learn low level stuff like CPU assembly, operating system and VGA, VBE, linear frame buffering graphics. I want to see how far I can go with low end x86, arm, misp, and fpga devices
progval 6y ago
The CPU vendor apparently distributes binaries for this SoC that infringe on u-boot and linux's licenses: https://linux-sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations https://linux-sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations Do you know if these binaries are required to run the Pinetab?
- megous 6y ago
  No.
leonidasv 6y ago
It would be even greater with some quick accessible GPIO pins. That would make this tablet the ultimate Pocket CHIP[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)#Pocket_CHIP_and_Pockulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)#Pocket_CHIP_an...
bleegastan 6y ago
...2GB RAM is a bit of a disappointment for those of us spoiled by higher end devices (like my Note 10+ w/ Dex), BUT - there is room to expand with some kinda SD and then map a bunch of SWAP space to it, right? Won't a generous allocation of swap compensate?
- exikyut 6y ago
  As someone who has more experience than I care to quantify regarding RAM-starved, swap-abundant systems: no. Well... OK, a subjective measurement on the "death by how many thousand cuts"-scale would be somewhere between 10,000 and 1,000,000 cuts, IMO, depending on what you're trying to do. You'll also rapidly exhaust the SD card's flash lifetime, and all the spare capacity... which will make the SD return read errors, nicely corrupting the contents of RAM. You can verify the slowdown/lag/pain factor easily enough: boot Linux on any PC with `mem=2G`, attach an SD card you don't mind nuking :), and go nuts.
aidenn0 6y ago
This may finally replace my surface-rt for movies on long car-trips; it's a 16:10 rather than 16:9 but otherwise checks all the boxes: widescreen, usb port (so I can just put files on an old thumb drive), and can run VLC.
pivic 6y ago
Noob question: please tell me that it's simple to remap the keyboard so that it matches, say, a Swedish keyboard layout?
- fsflover 6y ago
  You just change some config file and that's it.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I like what Pine64 guys have been doing, great devices to hack at reasonable price creating foundation for a pure linux based linux mobile devices; of course projects like Ubuntu Touch, PureOS, PostmarketOS maturing at the right time has been a blessing. Now, this is what I need Pine64 - 'A small pocketable, user repairable linux laptop with GSM module' which can replace smartphone. Current options are GPD[1], One-netbook[2] both of which are expensive, not-user repairable, built for windows. Then there's planet computer's devices[3], but they seem to be android first although they offer linux as multi-boot option. Why pocketable linux laptop when there's PinePhone, Librem5? Well, the main bottleneck in the linux app ecosystem is adapting it to the touch screen of the smartphone. I think a pocketable linux laptop could serve well in the interim, may be the form factor will prove better for productivity and will stay as a separate profitable segment. [1]http://gpd.hk/ http://gpd.hk/ [2]https://www.1netbook.com/ https://www.1netbook.com/ [3]https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices
Havoc 6y ago
I kinda feel like the screen lets it down a bit. Much of this appeals (M.2!), but I can't see myself ever buying a 720p device again.

274 points by reddotX 6y ago

I noticed this has a removable battery, which makes this very interesting to me. What I'd like to know is if it will work with the battery compartment empty on AC power only. I'd like to have "smart" displays wall mounted around the house with dashboards on them. I've read about so many instances where people used wall mounted iPads and Android tablets where the batteries would swell after a period of use.

zlalanne 6y ago
Yep, this was the first thing I thought of. Hoping to do the same thing.
zozbot234 6y ago
> What I'd like to know is if it will work with the battery compartment empty on AC power only. The Pinebook laptops can work without a battery while connected to AC, but not out of the box. A simple hardware mod is necessary to enable this, that's documented by Pine.
- pinfisher 6y ago
  That is unusual. I have never had a laptop that would not work without a battery present.
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    MBPs at some point switched to drawing power faster than it could be provided by the plug alone. Of course, you can't tell nowadays whether laptops will work without a battery, because most batteries are non-removeable.
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      I don't think I've ever seen that behavior with a MacBook Pro of any vintage -- and I've had an MBP of one stripe or another since at least 2007, using the date of the 2007 MacBook Pro gathering dust bunnies nearby -- except when I use the wrong power supply with it, e.g., a 13" MBP power supply with a 15" one, or my MacBook Air's power supply with any MBP now. I wouldn't doubt it's possible to draw more power than the adapter can give you if you're pushing the MBP full-bore, but I'm pretty sure that under normal power loads, this doesn't happen.
      - Rebelgecko 6y ago
        I suspect that this is the reason why MBPs now refuse to boot on low battery. You used to be able to start up the machine when your battery was at 0% (as long as you were plugged in), but newer MBPs complain and don't boot up until you recharge to 10% or so.
      - jki275 6y ago
        They just bumped the power adapter on the 2019 MBP up a little bit. I've seen people say that if they max all cores and leave it that way it will drain the battery even if it's plugged in. I haven't attempted that, and I've never seen the behavior under any other circumstance.
      - anthonyskipper 6y ago
        Try mining cryptocurrency, running prime95, playing fps shooters, or even dota on high settings. You will notice the battery draining while plugged in. You also see it if you are on an airplane, but that is usually because the charger tries to pull too much and overheats and gives up ghost. Macbooks have underpowered chargers.
        djrogers 6y ago
        > Macbooks have underpowered chargers. My 16” shipped with a 96 watt charger, and I’ve not seen a laptop with a higher powered one. I’d have to contend with that assertion.
  - eurg 6y ago
    Lenovos etc. don't care, but I've seen this first hand with some Acer and Asus laptops. It has nothing to do w/peak power consumption, that is a wholly different problem, of a different class of devices.
    - calvinmorrison 6y ago
      some Lenovo devices do throttle though. If you do not have a battery and are using the 65W not 90W lenovo chargers on an X220, it will throttle your power.
  - fencepost 6y ago
    I have a couple of old ThinkPads that work but seem to throttle heavily, I've attributed it to need for better burst draw handling. Also one of their older W models that will only run on battery if a standard 90W power supply is connected and will only charge the battery if the device is off. Running on external power is only supported with the 135W or (stock) 170W PSU.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    It’s really not, especially for high end models if you are stressing your hardware and it’s not an awfully thermally limited design you’ll drain the battery even when you are connected to the charger. You have 60W chargers usually for systems with max power draw of the CPU+GPU that can reach around 200W peak and in the mid to high 1XXW sustained if you have a DTR/high-performance “mobile” CPU + dGPU. Even if your laptop comes with a 90W charger it’s still a problem because it’s not enough to power a 65W series H CPU and a high end GPU that draws another 80-120W. Most laptops will always use the battery directly and trickle charge it due to the power draw. Power(hungry)ful modern gaming/DTR style laptops can use both concurrently, heck older gaming laptops used to come with multiple power supplies that were needed simply because even the battery wasn’t enough at the time to serve as a buffer, so you had to plug in 2 power adapters to power the laptop fully. Even without this constraint having a single power path is cheaper and simpler to design so most manufacturers just only draw from the battery and have a separate charging circuit that charges it without having to add power balancing and switching circuitry. IBM thinkpads used to advertise that you can switch the battery while the laptop was plugged into the charger most laptops of that period didn’t support this either. If you go even further it was even more of a headache because older laptops used LiPo batteries which were even more finicky.
    - exikyut 6y ago
      > older gaming laptops used to come with multiple power supplies Some curious digging found two examples (with pictures): https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/2612-why-2-power-adapters-for-the-msi-dual-gtx-1080-laptop https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/2612-why-2-power-adapter... https://hothardware.com/reviews/dell-alienware-area-51m-review-and-benchmarks https://hothardware.com/reviews/dell-alienware-area-51m-revi...
  - myself248 6y ago
    That's unusual for modern machines. It was de rigeur from the first portables up to about 2005, as I recall. I was rudely surprised by my first Core 2-era machine that wouldn't boot without a battery installed, because prior to that, from Pentium-based Toughbooks back to the 486-based Noteflex back to various 8088 and even pre-x86 machines (PC8201A, club100 represent!), they were all absolutely fine running from the power inlet alone with no battery. The Zenith MiniSport was the sole exception because the power jack was actually physically on the battery, but you could still gut an old dead battery and make a dummy, and it would run from the brick just fine. (This is documented in the very first issue of Brian Mork's excellent Minisport Laptop Hacker zine, available wherever fine textfiles are sold.)
comboy 6y ago
I went with raspberry pi + LCD. Even though there are many LCD options I recommend going with their official pi touch display, it just works without headaches. I did use their official enclosure, but it doesn't really seem to be well designed for wall mount (some 3d printing and magnets helped). I think going with an android tablet is fine and headache free. I just don't like aesthetics of that solution.
- slantyyz 6y ago
  > I think going with an android tablet is fine and headache free. The problem with many tablets is that leaving them plugged can cause batteries to swell, which can end up being a huge headache. I've heard stories of offices that used iPads as wall mounted displays having this problem, so I don't think any particular make or model is immune to this issue. I considered Pi+Monitor, but for me, something like the Pinetab is a cleaner, simpler solution. And at $99 without the keyboard, that's a pretty decent price.
  - Raphael_Amiard 6y ago
    > I considered Pi+Monitor, but for me, something like the Pinetab is a cleaner, simpler solution. And at $99 without the keyboard, that's a pretty decent price. Of course you should go for what is easier for you, and the pinetab does sound easier, however I'd argue that it is not cleaner. Separating the screen and main unit will allow for a more serviceable solution, changing either piece if it breaks, or upgrading the main unit if you need more power/different connectivity.
bigiain 6y ago
> I've read about so many instances where people used wall mounted iPads and Android tablets where the batteries would swell after a period of use. Made that mistake myself. I now have a wall mounted iPad with the charger plugged into a timer powerpoint that only switches on for 1hr a day. Been running like that for 5+ years now without issue. (I'd planned for that to just be a proof of concept, and to use a wifi powerpoint that'd turn on when the battery dropped to 20% and back off where it hit 80%. The easy solution has turned out to be "good enough" and has remained in production, like that cronjob perl script from 2004...)
- throwaway41597 6y ago
  Really cool! Could you give specifics about the typical low and high of the battery cycle, please? (from XX% to XX%).
  - bigiain 6y ago
    I'd been intending to aim for 20%-80% cycles, because I read that's "good for lithium batteries". The timer switch I grabbed to do my proof of concept only has 15min resolution (it's a weird old mechanical one where you move plastic pins in the stop/start time rings). I recall setting it to 45mins because the docs says the iPad gets 80% charge in 1 hour, and it'd occasionally run down and switch off, so I bumped it up to 1hr and haven't touched it since. I just checked now, it charged for an hour overnight finishing ~10.5 hours ago, and is currently saying 59% charge. I honestly have no idea how low or high the charge level gets, just that I haven't needed to wake it back up from a shutdown in over 4 years... I've come to doubt the details there are important. Don't leave it on charge 24x7, that'll kill it fairly quickly (~9 months in one data point of mine). Charge it long enough and regularly enough to keep it running, but at the low end of that spectrum. Keep in mind my goal here is less "extend the life of the battery", and more " prevent the battery from swelling up and damaging the device/catching fire", but I suspect there's a fair bit of crossover between those goals, since I've not needed to increase the charge time in response to any battery capacity decrease over 5 years (which in retrospect surprises me somewhat). If I was aiming to maintain the best possible range in an electric vehicle, I'd probably pay much more attention to max charge and min discharge levels, but "the simplest possible thing" has been working well enough for me to just leave it alone. If it dies on me tomorrow, I'll be happy enough with the use I got out of it and the tradeoff of time I spent futzing with it. (Note: I'm also quite familiar with abusing LiPo batteries way past safe limits, I raced FPV quadcopters 5-6 years back, and in my worst excesses, I'd be aiming to completely drain a flight pack in ~2 minutes. They'd end up too hot to touch, and start to decline to the point of not being race competitive within 20 or 25 cycles. They'd also catch into unextinguishable fire in big crashes and occasionally while charging. I have a healthy fear/respect of high capacity and high current LiPo batteries...)

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

How is touch screen on linux these days, I'm probably pick one up but can't imagine running UBports on 2GB ram. I would rather use i3/lighter DE + touch screen support for some GUI apps?

ipnon 6y ago
Here's a demo of UBports Ubuntu on the Pinephone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ne6G0-hn9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ne6G0-hn9g
- fsflover 6y ago
  A more recent demo, much smoother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8
boogies 6y ago
Someone's set up a sort of dwm-based DE on the Pinephone: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/ https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/
- floren 6y ago
  Thanks for this, this looks almost exactly like what I want in a Linux phone. I've found DEs like phosh far, far too heavy for the Pinephone.
- exikyut 6y ago
  http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfeatures.mp4 http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfe... (MP4) ...well that was... interesting...

ssivark 6y ago

The Pine folks have been doing fantastic work over the last several years. Does anyone know of ways to support them other than buying products? I don’t really need these gadgets right now, and don’t have the time to tinker, but want to encourage the ecosystem from a long-term perspective. For example, I’d love to give them some money and become a long-term member/shareholder/something. I don’t really care for the rate of return; I’m more interested in a reason to stay engaged with the organization as its products might mature into my use cases, and help them along the way.

xnyan 6y ago
One suggestion, buy a product for someone who could use it but doesn’t have the resources. As a kid who loved to tinker and had no money this would have meant the world to me at that time.
- j05h 6y ago
  Was thinking the same...school donations maybe?
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    Many libraries also have programs for children interested in tech, might be good to check with a local one.
- ssivark 6y ago
  I know what you mean; I was in a similar situation growing up. One very unfortunate phenomenon among most of the kids I see today is that they are so swamped by “structured” activities that they have no time to “tinker” for the heck of it. They feel pressured that all their time ought to show returns on their resume/exams/applications/etc :-/ I would love to enable a few kids and engage with them so I might at least vicariously get some of the fun of tinkering.
- renegading 6y ago
  I think Pine sells their products at cost so that won't benefit them directly.

awinter-py 6y ago

would love to know what the model is that lets these penetrate the mass market I buy mine because I'll jump through any hoop to not carry around a fortune 500 in my pocket For the consumer market -- runnability of android? hardware quality? low price? Some compatibility factor that only an open company can hit?

boogies 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6lAjgfW3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6lAjgfW3c If this functionality was demoed by Apple on a new $999 "MacPad Pro" there would be arguments over if it was the end of the PC and the beginning of the next generation of computing, a leap like the smartphone revolution. Edits: price, s/this/this functionality/ I took this out of context (sorry), it's a very pre-production device that has received a lot of work since then and will receive much more. https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-orders-pinephone-qi-charging-more/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-ord...

KuiN 6y ago
It's really cool, but my main takeaway from that video was multi-second input lag and you can see several times when he's dragging things around the computer doesn't do what he's expecting. It's a cool tech demo but I don't see how it's going to change the world like that.
- boogies 6y ago
  Agreed. I think Apple would have made a device with maybe 4 times the specs (eg. 8 Gb RAM instead of 2) and ten times the price (edited the parent to reflect that) and kept it top secret until right before release. There's still hope that this will eventually be polished to perfection, but it will probably take years of revisions.
zozbot234 6y ago
Meh, I don't know. It looks clunky in lots of ways, the GNOME3 UX feels a lot cleaner and more intuitive. Hopefully future GNOME versions will be able to run usefully on 2GB RAM. Or perhaps MATE and Xfce will adopt some of the same touch-friendly interaction principles.
deergomoo 6y ago
Are we watching the same video? This is basically no different to what you get on any Windows convertible (though the tablet-mode interactions are closer to the iPad), except way, way jankier.

wpietri 6y ago

Very interesting! I've been looking for cheap wall-mountable touchscreens so I can have permanent, single-purpose interfaces and displays. For example, I have a KanbanFlow board to track my work, and I use an old tablet mounted to the wall next to my standing desk. I was thinking I'd get cheap Android tablets and root them, but I'd much rather support something where it's built for user control from the beginning.

jcun4128 6y ago
Side thought... is it even cheaper if you just have displays/use an ESP to do http requests to a local server... guess depends what they have to do. I mean I think you would need a 32 to drive the display too vs. just an ESP01
- slim 6y ago
  I don't think they're capable of displaying a web page
  - folmar 6y ago
    Depends on the webpage, but the you can always render server-side
  - jcun4128 6y ago
    Oh maybe I didn't read parent comment thoroughly enough I was talking about having a UI with defined buttons you click and it sends the http request. Yeah missed the Kanban part
- wpietri 6y ago
  Dollar cheaper perhaps, but not time cheaper for me. I just want an easy place to display web pages and web apps.
  - jcun4128 6y ago
    Yeah that's true, it took me a long time to figure out how to flash my ESP01 haha

julianlam 6y ago

This is interesting to me because I'm in the market for a new tablet. Is this more of a hacker device (IR blaster, odd assortment of ports, full OS, etc.) or consumer? It should ideally pass the wife test...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Not a ton of ports, USB 2.0 Type-A and Micro-B, Micro-HDMI out, SD card. But there's an expansion card slot, which is pretty unheard of for a tablet. So you can add like an SSD or a LoRa radio or what-have-you.
hsitz 6y ago
It doesn't sound like this is for you. If "wife test" means the wife using and it and liking it, pretty sure it would fail. It's not what this is marketed for. An Amazon Kindle tablet would be more what you're looking for, if this is the price point you want.
igorbark 6y ago
the mild sexism wasn't necessary
- julianlam 6y ago
  What mild sexism? I want a tablet that my wife will use to browse the web and watch videos, and she will be evaluating it's fitness for her daily use. It's literally exactly what I said.
  - exikyut 6y ago
    (The "flag" option can be found by clicking the post submit date.)
  - bchanudet 6y ago
    I think it's because "wife test" looks a lot like "wife acceptance factor" [1], which has a much more degrading meaning than what you wanted to convey. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor

iicc 6y ago

The link (store page) is unresponsive. The webpage for the product is https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/

dang 6y ago
It seems to be working now, just slowly.

JustSomeNobody 6y ago

Pricing Details: The PineTab – $99.99 The magnetic backlit keyboard – $19.99 That's interesting. I love my iPad mini 5, but at this price I may have to pick one of these up.

duxup 6y ago
Yeah for non iPad specific stuff ... just reading and streaming this might be way more cost effective.

SPQT 6y ago

I'd rather get second hand iPad.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
An iPad can't do things that this does; in particular, any pine product gives you full control the device and the ability to execute arbitrary code.
Darmody 6y ago
The point of this device is precisely being able to move away from iPads/Android tablets. I'm tired of not being able to uninstall Dropbox because Samsung doesn't want me to.

chrismorgan 6y ago

I suppose the keyboard needs to be attached to operate? I use a Surface Book. I’ve been interested to discover that I would quite often like to have the keyboard continue to work after detaching the base, because when drawing on the device a keyboard is still useful for switching between tools, activating things, typing in precise values when necessary, &c. To be sure, a large part of this is just that I’m using apps that haven’t been optimised for keyboardless usage (I’m talking things like Krita, Inkscape, OpenToonz), but even if they were, a keyboard would still be useful. As it stands, I’d need to buy a second keyboard, one that worked by Bluetooth, to achieve this goal. (In the particular case of the Surface Book, detaching the base isn’t quite as useful as you might imagine, because ¾ of the battery life is in it, so you’ll get ~3h at most, <2h if using it much.)

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
It's got pogo pins, it looks likely to just be a pogo pin USB port down there? Pretty sure they'd mention if the keyboard was wireless. Honestly, I hate having a second battery to worry about charging: I'd much rather a keyboard just be a keyboard.
Lex-2008 6y ago
yes, keyboard is attached via pogo pins (which actually are just USB), but tablet also has a "normal" USB port where you can just insert any plain USB keyboard. source: https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ ("Learn More About It!" link at the bottom goes to forum post from 2019)

jandrese 6y ago

They are serious about not making profit with these. $100 for a full up tablet and it includes the keyboard/touchpad? 2GB of RAM is pretty limiting but 64GB of storage is quite respectable at this price point. The 6AH battery pack is quite beefy too.

calvinmorrison 6y ago
"When fulfilling the purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the PineTab at this price as a community service to PINE64 communities. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the PineTab. Thank you." no or low amounts of QA significantly reduce cost
- goda90 6y ago
  They do have some QA. My Pinebook Pro is in good shape hardware wise. Arstechnica reported that because of the pandemic their QA has been terrible lately(switched factories, not able to come onsite for QA training and such).
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  With regards to dead pixels, every vendor I know of has terms like this, it's just hidden in the warranty small print, not on the store page: https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/ht035306 https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/ht035306 https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/05/leaked_apple_dead_pixel_policy_allows_two_for_ipad_none_fir_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/05/leaked_apple_dead...
  - squarefoot 6y ago
    I wonder what are the odds of finding dead pixels today. I saw lots of them in the past, and in a few cases they were really nasty to stand (imagine a pixel stuck at full brightness in the center of a screen mostly containing dark terminals) , but admittedly in the last 10 years or so I can't remember of a single one. However, although all vendors bury the dead pixel disclaimer, being so open about it makes one wonder if their quality checks are cheaper than others. I would happily pay more to be 100% sure there are no dead pixels btw.

drcongo 6y ago

I have no idea what I'd do with one of these, but that price point is barely more than a Raspberry Pi 4 with a few accessories. I think I might buy one.

foo2020 6y ago

2GB ram seems to be pretty limiting.

Maha-pudma 6y ago

Is that a 30 day warranty? No thanks.

jagger27 6y ago
The dead pixel disclaimer bothers me too, but at this price point you really can't argue.
- fenwick67 6y ago
  Even most middle-road laptops, monitors and phones have these disclaimers in the warranties AFAIK.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    This amazes me. You could literally spend 2 grand on a machine and still be told its ok for it to be defective out of the box.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Well, if it's a high-res display then there's a lot more pixels so a greater chance of failure. I actually really like this system and wish that I could trade-off further down the spectrum on quality. After all, to get a zero-dead-pixel device you just have to check in the second-hand market like people do for high-binned CPUs. The volume of true demand for those CPUs is high enough that there are retailers like Silicon Lottery that explicitly look out for that. It turns out that most consumers don't really want a zero-dead-pixel guarantee though.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        >It turns out that most consumers don't really want a zero-dead-pixel guarantee though. Alternatively they just buy their displays from brick and mortar companies that allow you to return for any reason at all and just return for replacement any device that has any number of dead pixels. I've never bought a display that had any number of defective pixels in almost 3 decades of using computers I'm betting lots of people are in the same boat. Logically the price is built into whatever such places are selling them for based on some percentage of users returning anything with any number of dead pixels.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I bought one. The USB configuration sounds a bit sad. USB 2.0 Type-A and Micro-B is a very dated configuration, especially considering the PinePhone has a USB-C. But I am interested in seeing how the ecosystem comes together and the price is absolutely right for this thing.

tvb12 6y ago

Wow, Pine64 has a really beautiful logo.

mahesh_rm 6y ago

Does it run vscode?

11c1d5c57446 6y ago
Does it run emacs?
Johnnynator 6y ago
Sure it does, the question is only how good the experience is on such a low power device.

jjice 6y ago

Absolutely incredible for the $120 price point. If they release a PineTab Pro in the future with 4 (or dare I say 8GB) of ram, I'd be all over it. At that point, I could really start to be productive. 2GB is a bit limiting for the modern web unfortunately, but there is a ton of potential here. I'm considering buying one to use as my main machine for this next year at Uni. Taking notes in VS Code/Vim would be fine, but I could see some of my course load being hindered by the ram. As a portable SSH machine, a kid's first computer, or a nice portable machine with a screen for hobby projects, I think this will be fantastic.

dleslie 6y ago
I would jump at buying an 8gb model.
buckhx 6y ago
More RAM and USB-C and will 100% purchase
- noir_lord 6y ago
  For me it would be a higher res screen, I'm find anything less than 1920x1080 at 10.1" jarring because of my astigmatism it gives me headaches.
als0 6y ago
> 2GB is a bit limiting for the modern web unfortunately This saddens me...
- popped 6y ago
  Yea that's kind of insane isn't it? I wish there was a lite version of the Web with enforced resource constraints
  - MagnumOpus 6y ago
    There is - you can just install NoScript to block all scripts and stop video autoplay in Firefox setting. Presto - a slim web. (Sites that need JS often have a slim alternative - there are superfast "lite" or "mobile" sites for GMail, Reddit, Facebook and many more.)

rewsiffer 6y ago

Wow, I was ready to pull the trigger on this until I saw the $30 shipping.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
They don't subsidize anything here, so yeah, cost of shipping is really the cost to take a box from China to your house, pretty much. FWIW, when I got my PineBook Pro, DHL was literally like overnight from Hong Kong to the US. I think if you consider it part of the cost ($150 for tablet and keyboard shipped), it's still a pretty good deal.
- rewsiffer 6y ago
  Yeah, good point. Maybe I am just conditioned to subsidized free shipping from China.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    That's going to end. The UPU agreed to let the US charge 70% of its domestic shipping cost to foreign carriers.

jareds 6y ago

Does anyone know if there custom OS has a screen reader? I'm totally blind and this is priced at the point where I'd like to play with it assuming it's usable for me.

coolspot 6y ago
I would love to give you a definite answer, but only way to know for sure is to test yourself. PineTab can run any ARM OS, so you can install one that you have positive experience with. These OSes are touch-optimized and recommended: UBPorts (community-driven Ubuntu Touch) postmarketOS Arch Linux ARM I know that desktop Ubuntu has screen reader (Orca) installed by default. No sure about Ubuntu Touch. My Google-fu shows very outdated answers.
- folmar 6y ago
  You should be able to run a standard Ubuntu if you don't aim for touch-driven interaction; @jareds - do you?
exikyut 6y ago
Wow, what an interesting question. Open source first-class accessible tinkerer/maker-oriented hardware design. That gets me wondering... what would be the ideal here? I don't have much experience with blind-oriented usage but I get the impression blind users only keep screens around for when software/the OS falls apart and orientational cues completely break down... but perhaps sighted assistance is needed less often than I presume, and blind users simply use phones and laptops with screens because that's what dominates the market. Maybe you could viably get away with having a quick-access mechanism that lets someone use their own device's display whenever assistance is required. I can totally see a device that serves VNC over HTML5 to any web browser via a built-in hotspot, that would be pretty universal. Which leads me to the question of how useful touchscreen gestures are - since that's all touchscreens are useful for in a blind context - and if there isn't a better input method than that. I get the impression keyboards are pretty much "it". It would be pretty cool if your entire computer was a keyboard with a 3.5mm headphone jack :) The Pinetab is basically a highish-end ARM system with its own bits of novel hardware added on, so the base question becomes "how usable is the mainline AArch64 Linux experience for blind users?". I suspect it's somewhere between "poor" and "fair"; and bespoke hardware in this device may add a small amount of extra strain on top of that. Now I'm puzzling over which mechanical keyboards are the thinnest, and if you could cram a power bank and ARM development board into the footprint space underneath.

Sir_Substance 6y ago

I've been waiting for this to come out. Unfortunately, I tried to buy the pinetime late last year and discovered they only sell through paypal and you need an account to make the payment, you can't just pay by credit card. If there's anyone from pine watching: Please, add a normal credit card option. Paypal is a horrid company. I'm prepared to pay directly with a credit card via them, but I _will not_ make an account with them just to buy your stuff. Please let me give you money without making a legal agreement with a third party :(

rossvor 6y ago
You don't need a paypal account to pay by credit card via paypal. Select "Pay by Debit or Credit Card" when it asks you to login to paypal.
- Sir_Substance 6y ago
  That option is enabled or disabled by the user. Pine has (still) not enabled it: https://i.imgur.com/Y1OhCkX.png https://i.imgur.com/Y1OhCkX.png In case anyone from pine is watching, here's the doc on how to do it: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payments/guest-payments/ https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payment... It's like....5 clicks.
  - rossvor 6y ago
    Interesting, it's enabled for me -- that's how I bought it -- without creating an account. Maybe this feature is perhaps region locked somehow? I'm in UK. EDIT: it is indeed gated by some vague heuristics[1]. >Buyers don't always have the option to complete their purchases without using or creating a PayPal account. This option is presented based on several risk factors, including but not limited to the buyer's PayPal purchase history, PayPal cookies stored on the buyer's computer, the buyer's location, or a credit assessment. [1] https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-accept-credit-cards-with-express-checkout-using-the-guest-checkout-option-ts1623 https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-accept-...

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.vn/Lm8EA https://archive.vn/Lm8EA

zachberger 6y ago
I get certificate invalid here..
- fenwick67 6y ago
  Invalid cert, and then after temporarily allowing, I get a 403.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Try: https://archive.today/Lm8EA https://archive.today/Lm8EA https://archive.is/Lm8EA https://archive.is/Lm8EA https://archive.fo/Lm8EA https://archive.fo/Lm8EA https://archive.li/Lm8EA https://archive.li/Lm8EA https://archive.vn/Lm8EA https://archive.vn/Lm8EA https://archive.md/Lm8EA https://archive.md/Lm8EA https://archive.ph/Lm8EA https://archive.ph/Lm8EA One typically works. List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today Cloudflare is in a grudge match with archive.today: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
  - tomxor 6y ago
    All invalid certs/403, even google webcache is 404ing, how elusive...

benbojangles 6y ago

I'm thinking a portable SDR setup

pengaru 6y ago

Meanwhile coming up on a month of waiting for my ubports pinephone to arrive... Not even a shipping update yet.

ricecake 6y ago
Uhhh yeah they have https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942
- pengaru 6y ago
  I purchased directly from their web store, not via a forum group buy or other means. They have my contact information, and I have not received a single peep to inform me on the status of my purchase. Just radio silence. If I'm expected to go root out some forum thread to monitor progress on things I purchase from the pine64 store, that's worth noting here to inform everyone's expectations.
  - ricecake 6y ago
    You said they didn't give a shipping update. They did. Doesn't matter if you don't like they way that they did so.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      They gave a shipping update to forum users/readers. I have also not received an update since ordering on 11th of May. Like the parent said, an e-mail would be nice, they have it.
    - pengaru 6y ago
      They didn't give me a shipping update. They could post a shipping update on the wall of their local laundromat for all the good that did me when I'm not monitoring their message forums. If not for this thread, I'd still be operating in the dark having basically forgotten I even bought the thing. I appreciate your comment pointing me at the forum, pine64 should have emailed that link to everyone who ordered one in the affected time period.

axegon_ 6y ago

I am not going to lie, I'm not a big fan of the arm experience on Linux. While the situation has improved, it is still a painful experience. It has always felt like you're trying to run windows 7 on a pentium II, regardless of lightweight desktop environments or even no desktop environment. That said, this does look like a very appealing solution for something to shove in the backpack when hiking or whatnot, as opposed to carrying around a 1.5k ultrabook. I'll keep an eye out and wait for some review and real-world experiences and I might jump on that train.

imprettycool 6y ago
Isn't the issue just drivers?

bArray 6y ago

Just purchased one, very excited. Looking forward to it arriving sometime in August. My use case is basic browsing, taking notes in meetings, reviewing papers (using something like xournal), SSH'ing into remote machines, a small amount of dev'ing (compiling on remote) and perhaps presentations (has HD output). I travel alot and having a machine that doesn't break my back would be cool. If the keyboard is half-way decent I may even use it for writing too. The reason for this device over other existing solutions are many: low price, built for Linux, lightweight, low-power (good battery), form factor (where did you go netbooks :( ) and a great community!

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

I've got an old windows tablet with similar specs, old intel atom, 2GB ram. (linx1010b) Its gathering dust because its so underpowered, could not find a use for it as a GUI user device. I think some kind of kiosk / iot hub with display application could work, if you put in the effort.

zozbot234 6y ago
Newer Linux releases generally work quite well on these tablets as far as hardware support goes. The one thing that's marginally underpowered is the amount of RAM, and in my experience 2GB still suffices for simple use cases.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

So they wrapped some clam-shell around their SOPINE A64 COMPUTE MODULE? [1] https://store.pine64.org/?product=sopine-a64 https://store.pine64.org/?product=sopine-a64 [2] https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine Looks like Resterampe/left-over sale to me. Come on, 2GB? In 2020?

mattlondon 6y ago

If this had USB-C for charging I'd be really interested and would purchase. I can live with the rest of the specs. I know USB-C has a bad rep but it is honestly just amazing having one charger that does everything. I don't want to regress from that

veridies 6y ago

This looks wonderful, and I bought it as soon as preorders opened; I'd love to have a Linux tablet to read books on and take to work (I'm a teacher, not a programmer). It definitely is pretty low-powered, though, and I'd appreciate a higher-end alternative. Is there any Windows-based tablet that you can reliably and easily install Linux on?

ddevault 6y ago
>Is there any Windows-based tablet that you can reliably and easily install Linux on? Samsung Series 7 Slate XE700T1A
- shmerl 6y ago
  Are there any tablets that have open drivers for GPU and touchscreen? Problem with blobs is that such tablets are forever stuck with ancient kernels.
  - ddevault 6y ago
    The one I mentioned works fine with the upstream kernel for everything. It just has an Intel GPU.
    - shmerl 6y ago
      Good to know, thanks!
lasftew 6y ago
The first generation Surface Go works very well, except for the cameras, which are not supported.

pathartl 6y ago

I love what Pine is trying to do, but man those A53 CPUs and Mali-400 GPUs are really pretty crummy. Similarly spec'd Allwinner chips were on the PlayStation Classic and Nintendo Classic microconsoles.

SahAssar 6y ago
Those were running emulators though, running native software will be more efficient.
- pathartl 6y ago
  The community has ported a bunch of native stuff and it still performs poorly.

mjcohen 6y ago

Took me quite a while, but I finally got my order in. It'll come, eventually, I hope.

dmitrygr 6y ago

Cortex-A53 is a very slow in-order core. Think Pentium 1 -level IPC. Eg: it can dispatch at most one multiplication, and will stall the entire pipeline for a few cycles if you try another one soon after. I doubt this is going to perform well

rbanffy 6y ago
OTOH, no speculative execution side channels.

gorgoiler 6y ago

The further I get with computers the less I need. I’ve been teaching computer graphics using a 160 x 48 pixel display rendering Unicode Braille dots. It’s absolutely enough for: - random colored text - line drawing fun - circles - z buffers - convex hulls - ray tracing spheres (Checkerboards are too noisy though, and no Newell teapots. Alas, if only my browser supported PBM, the graphics format of winners.) So yeah, bring it on! Doing more with less feels like a journey worth traveling. I want one!

wltprgm 6y ago
May I know what's that 160 x 48 display and processor you are using to teach? I am interested to learn low level stuff like CPU assembly, operating system and VGA, VBE, linear frame buffering graphics. I want to see how far I can go with low end x86, arm, misp, and fpga devices

progval 6y ago

The CPU vendor apparently distributes binaries for this SoC that infringe on u-boot and linux's licenses: https://linux-sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations https://linux-sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations Do you know if these binaries are required to run the Pinetab?

megous 6y ago
No.

leonidasv 6y ago

It would be even greater with some quick accessible GPIO pins. That would make this tablet the ultimate Pocket CHIP[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)#Pocket_CHIP_and_Pockulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)#Pocket_CHIP_an...

bleegastan 6y ago

...2GB RAM is a bit of a disappointment for those of us spoiled by higher end devices (like my Note 10+ w/ Dex), BUT - there is room to expand with some kinda SD and then map a bunch of SWAP space to it, right? Won't a generous allocation of swap compensate?

exikyut 6y ago
As someone who has more experience than I care to quantify regarding RAM-starved, swap-abundant systems: no. Well... OK, a subjective measurement on the "death by how many thousand cuts"-scale would be somewhere between 10,000 and 1,000,000 cuts, IMO, depending on what you're trying to do. You'll also rapidly exhaust the SD card's flash lifetime, and all the spare capacity... which will make the SD return read errors, nicely corrupting the contents of RAM. You can verify the slowdown/lag/pain factor easily enough: boot Linux on any PC with `mem=2G`, attach an SD card you don't mind nuking :), and go nuts.

aidenn0 6y ago

This may finally replace my surface-rt for movies on long car-trips; it's a 16:10 rather than 16:9 but otherwise checks all the boxes: widescreen, usb port (so I can just put files on an old thumb drive), and can run VLC.

pivic 6y ago

Noob question: please tell me that it's simple to remap the keyboard so that it matches, say, a Swedish keyboard layout?

fsflover 6y ago
You just change some config file and that's it.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I like what Pine64 guys have been doing, great devices to hack at reasonable price creating foundation for a pure linux based linux mobile devices; of course projects like Ubuntu Touch, PureOS, PostmarketOS maturing at the right time has been a blessing. Now, this is what I need Pine64 - 'A small pocketable, user repairable linux laptop with GSM module' which can replace smartphone. Current options are GPD[1], One-netbook[2] both of which are expensive, not-user repairable, built for windows. Then there's planet computer's devices[3], but they seem to be android first although they offer linux as multi-boot option. Why pocketable linux laptop when there's PinePhone, Librem5? Well, the main bottleneck in the linux app ecosystem is adapting it to the touch screen of the smartphone. I think a pocketable linux laptop could serve well in the interim, may be the form factor will prove better for productivity and will stay as a separate profitable segment. [1]http://gpd.hk/ http://gpd.hk/ [2]https://www.1netbook.com/ https://www.1netbook.com/ [3]https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices

Havoc 6y ago

I kinda feel like the screen lets it down a bit. Much of this appeals (M.2!), but I can't see myself ever buying a 720p device again.