Pine64’s final replace of 2022 brings phrase of a brand new model of its PineTab FOSS-driven pill after chip shortages successfully killed the primary era.
As per the December replace from the Hong Kong equipment vendor, the PineTab is formally lifeless. As we talked about a 12 months in the past, the unique PineTab was the bigger sibling of Pine64’s PinePhone Professional FOSS-driven smartphone. The corporate says:
PineTab’s dying was, in some half, a alternative on our half as selections have been made to allocate assets to safe PinePhone’s availability all through late 2020 and early 2021.
Part provides steadily improved this 12 months, and the PineBook Professional laptop computer resumed delivery again in August, though in restricted numbers. The PinePhone Professional can be trickling out. A current tweet from Adam Pigg, a developer of Jolla’s Sailfish Linux-based telephone OS, reveals a PinePhone Professional in its elective keyboard case, working with an unfinished port of Sailfish. One other tweet this month reveals one working Kali Linux. The {hardware} is on the market – we noticed certainly one of this pairing ultimately month’s Ubuntu Summit, though we have been sadly unable to ask the proprietor about it.
Now that the spec of the PineTab pill is wanting fairly dated, the corporate is giving up on it and shifting straight on to a second-generation gadget. It will use the identical Rockchip RK3566 SoC as the corporate’s Quartz64b single-board pc and the PineBook Professional laptop computer. This implies a 2GHz quad-core Arm Cortex-A55. There will likely be two fashions, one with 4GB RAM and 64GB flash, and a higher-end one with 8GB/128GB. The gadget will embrace each a 2MP forward-facing digicam and a 5MP rearward-facing one, a microSD slot, and a headphone socket. The gadget will likely be 9mm thick.
PineTab2 with the again off. Pics: courtesy Pine64
Many of the specs have but to be firmed up. As an illustration, the corporate says it is nonetheless testing shows and wi-fi modules, and the prototype’s 6Ah battery could but get replaced with one thing bigger. For us, two of the fascinating options are that the gadget will ship with a keyboard case as customary, and that it has two USB-C ports plus a microHDMI output, though one USB port solely helps USB 2 speeds and is principally supposed for charging. This presents the potential of attaching, for instance, an exterior monitor and a hub with each a mouse and keyboard hooked up, whereas the gadget is on cost.
As a detailed relative of the Quartz64, in concept, with solely just a little adjustment, the PineTab2 ought to be capable to assist most of that machine’s vary of OSes: Manjaro, Fedora, Armbian, postmarketOS, and numerous types of Debian, plus NetBSD, and OpenBSD.
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We suspect that a few of these OSes could not ship a very good or usable expertise on a pill, however it is going to be fascinating to see the UI and the way nicely they work. Ubuntu Contact already labored on the PineTab, so it ought to observe, too. It is good to see cheap and comparatively open {hardware} like this, and it could actually solely profit the ecosystem of pill Linux and open telephone OSes.
PineTab2
We’re not huge followers of pill computer systems at The Reg FOSS desk. We now have a few previous ones mendacity round, semi-useless as a result of they’re locked in to end-of-life OSes. No less than with most laptops, you’ll be able to improve their reminiscence and storage, set up a more recent OS, they usually have a number of ports so you’ll be able to plug in numerous exterior gadgets, together with supplementary storage. We now have been masking their constantly falling gross sales for years, way back to 2015.
This can be a long-term development, however as Linuxy varieties, we really feel that there is a hyperlink between this and the closed, non-expandable, non-upgradable nature of the {hardware}. For those who purchase an costly fondleslab and it turns into ineffective just a few years later as a result of the OS stopped receiving updates, it would not encourage you to go and purchase a brand new one, however distributors appear to fail to understand this. As such, a pill that house owners can open up and match spares to, and set up newer OS releases and alter the OS, sounds nice. If it has a number of ports and may drive a number of bits of exterior {hardware}, whereas nonetheless on cost, that sounds very fascinating factor to us. ®
