PineTab 2 Is Another Try At a Linux-Based Tablet, Without the 2020 Supply Crunch (arstechnica.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pine64, makers of ARM-based, tinker-friendly gadgets, is making the PineTab 2, a sequel to its Linux-powered tablet that mostly got swallowed up by the pandemic and its dire global manufacturing shortages. The PineTab 2, as described in Pine64's "December Update," is based around the RK3566, made by RockChip. Pine64 based its Quartz64 single-board system on the system-on-a-chip (SoC), and has all but gushed about it across several blog posts. It's "a dream-of-a-SoC," writes Community Director Lukasz Erecinski, a "modern mid-range quad-core Cortex-A55 processor that integrates a Mali-G52 MP2 GPU. And it should be ideal for space-constrained devices: it runs cool, has a variety of I/O options, solid price-to-performance ratio, and "is genuinely future-proof."
The PineTab 2 is a complete redesign, Erecinski claims. It has a metal chassis that "is very sturdy while also being easy to disassemble for upgrades, maintenance, and repair." The tablet comes apart with snap-in tabs, and Pine64 will offer replacement parts. The insides are modular, too, with the eMMC storage, camera, daughter-board, battery, and keyboard connector all removable "in under 5 minutes." The 10.1-inch IPS display, with "modern and reasonably thin bezels," should also be replaceable, albeit with more work. On that easily opened chassis are two USB-C ports, one for USB 3.0 I/O and one for charging (or USB 2.0 if you want). There's a dedicated micro-HDMI port, and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera and rear-facing 5-megapixel (not the kind of all-in-one media production machine Apple advertises, this tablet), a microSD slot, and a headphone jack. While a PCIe system is exposed inside the PineTab, most NVMe SSDs will not fit, according to Pine64. All of this is subject to change before final production, however.
As with the original PineTab, this model comes with a detachable, backlit keyboard cover, included by default. That makes supporting a desktop OS for the device far more viable, Erecinski writes. The firmware chipset is the same as in the PineBook Pro, which should help with that. No default OS has been decided as of yet, according to Pine64. The tablet should ship with two memory/storage variants, 4GB/64GB and 8GB/128GB. It's due to ship "sometime after the Chinese New Year" (January 22 to February 5), though there's no firm date. No price was announced, but "it will be affordable regardless of which version you'll settle on." A video version of the "December Update" can be found on YouTube.
The PineTab 2 is a complete redesign, Erecinski claims. It has a metal chassis that "is very sturdy while also being easy to disassemble for upgrades, maintenance, and repair." The tablet comes apart with snap-in tabs, and Pine64 will offer replacement parts. The insides are modular, too, with the eMMC storage, camera, daughter-board, battery, and keyboard connector all removable "in under 5 minutes." The 10.1-inch IPS display, with "modern and reasonably thin bezels," should also be replaceable, albeit with more work. On that easily opened chassis are two USB-C ports, one for USB 3.0 I/O and one for charging (or USB 2.0 if you want). There's a dedicated micro-HDMI port, and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera and rear-facing 5-megapixel (not the kind of all-in-one media production machine Apple advertises, this tablet), a microSD slot, and a headphone jack. While a PCIe system is exposed inside the PineTab, most NVMe SSDs will not fit, according to Pine64. All of this is subject to change before final production, however.
As with the original PineTab, this model comes with a detachable, backlit keyboard cover, included by default. That makes supporting a desktop OS for the device far more viable, Erecinski writes. The firmware chipset is the same as in the PineBook Pro, which should help with that. No default OS has been decided as of yet, according to Pine64. The tablet should ship with two memory/storage variants, 4GB/64GB and 8GB/128GB. It's due to ship "sometime after the Chinese New Year" (January 22 to February 5), though there's no firm date. No price was announced, but "it will be affordable regardless of which version you'll settle on." A video version of the "December Update" can be found on YouTube.
RK3566 (Score:2)
Ah yes, the "dream-of-an-SoC", just 6 times slower than the Celeron N5100 that I got in a $300 laptop. I'm sure it'll be fine for compiling your kernel though, this truly is the year of Linux on the desk...tablet.
Re: (Score:2)
Compiling, games and other heavy stuff I do on my desktop.
My current Lenovo Yoga Android tablet fails on the fast UI part, so if this does better at that then I am interested.
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Yes. I was in the market for a tablet upgrade, and wound up lured by a sale on a Lenovo Chromebook. It has been a great move so far, delivering far more than the Android tablets at a fraction of the cost.
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I just got a Lenovo Duet 3 Chromebook tablet to replace an older model; I use 70% chrome web sites and 30% android apps. Works wonderfully, was only $300 on sale, and it runs a linux VM for the occasional time I need more from my tablet than chromeos/android can handle. I love Unix, but a Unix-only tablet sounds laughably bad. I SSH into a server for my everyday Unix needs.
Re: RK3566 (Score:3)
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If Roblox lags on that device then the hardware is really poor. My daughter plays it with no problems on various old devices and Roblox does not have any demanding graphic features.
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I usually replace my sons M10 FHD for the latest gen every couple years. He doesnt like roblox on it, he claims lag.
i think it depends on the game within roblox. my daughter ...
Could be your son. :-) I know my nephew complains about lag and/or the network if his Intel i9, 32GB ram powered desktop doesn't have a graphics card that needs a fission reactor to power it and/or anyone else in his house just surfs the web, over their 1GB ISP connection, while he's gaming. /spoiled I'm temped to replace his rig with a IBM 8086 PC with 640kb ram and 300 baud dial-up modem like I once had for some perspective. :-)
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Then have it link to a BBS not the internet with ASCII graphics or text only games.
Or surf the web with Lynx [wikipedia.org]. :-)
Re: RK3566 (Score:1)
God, the sadists are out in droves today
Re: (Score:2)
I want a tablet with a fast UI for web browsing and ebook reading.
Compiling, games and other heavy stuff I do on my desktop.
My current Lenovo Yoga Android tablet fails on the fast UI part, so if this does better at that then I am interested.
This, although for me it's more mobile media consumption (I.E. on the train or plane). I've a mid range gaming laptop for long distance travel but a 15" laptop just doesn't work in an economy class seat.
Besides, don't most laptops already run a variant of Linux, Android. They've been available and popular for years.
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I want a tablet with a fast UI for web browsing and ebook reading. Compiling, games and other heavy stuff I do on my desktop. My current Lenovo Yoga Android tablet fails on the fast UI part, so if this does better at that then I am interested.
This, although for me it's more mobile media consumption (I.E. on the train or plane). I've a mid range gaming laptop for long distance travel but a 15" laptop just doesn't work in an economy class seat. Besides, don't most laptops already run a variant of Linux, Android. They've been available and popular for years.
Ugh, I meant to say "tablets".
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A55 is still seriously slow. There have been A72 SoCs available for years that would be faster than this thing. The only advantage I can see here is that A55 on modern processes (N7 or better) would be tiny, cheap, and very low in power draw. If you want a "fast UI for web browsing" then this thing is not the first place to start.
Re: RK3566 (Score:2)
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No, it's quite certain that an A55x4 SoC is gonna be dog slow. Just one example:
https://browser.geekbench.com/... [geekbench.com]
vs
https://browser.geekbench.com/... [geekbench.com]
Even the lowly Pi 4 @ 1.5 GHz is nearly twice as fast as the RK3566.
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I wonder if we are running into silicon tech differences (the RK i
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I assure you that a Celeron N5100 is not a dream to write boot firmware for.
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It's roughly the same processing speed and power of any number of Android tablets which are quite usable and even popular. So I'm not sure the reason for the snark. Tablets are not intended to be laptops. They fill a niche and do it quite well. As for PineTab's place in this niche, well that is rather niche. But I still find it interesting and even have a use for one when they start selling them.
Sounds pretty limp (Score:4, Insightful)
"eMMC storage"
meh
"The 10.1-inch IPS display"
Is it transflective? If not, how many nits?
"two USB-C ports, one for USB 3.0 I/O and one for charging (or USB 2.0 if you want)."
USB 3.0? Not even 3.1? And you can only charge on one of the ports? And only one of them even has USB 3.0?
"While a PCIe system is exposed inside the PineTab, most NVMe SSDs will not fit"
Most NVMe SSDs expect to plug into a M.2 slot, not a MiniPCIe slot, so this is not a surprise.
This thing had better be a lot cheaper than I think it's going to be, because otherwise, try again.
Also, don't even bother with the 4GB model. 4GB is fine for running Android and treating a tablet like a toy, but if your goal is to run a real Linux distribution, 8GB should be considered a realistic minimum today. This tendency to skimp on RAM to meet a price point is even worse than having a too-expensive device. People still spend enough that they expect a good experience, then they don't get it.
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I look forward to you releasing your much better alternative.
There are already much better tablets. Buy one of them. HTH, HAND
This whole idea that you shouldn't criticize a shit effort if you can't do better is stupid. My not being able to release a superior tablet doesn't mean this design isn't a senseless joke.
Re: Sounds pretty limp (Score:1)
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I'm still waiting for my sunlight-readable screens. Transflective or side-lit reflective works for me. Reasonable response speed. Color, perhaps like a magazine. No one seems to be working on this anymore. I guess it was a dead-end technologically or something. Everything seems to have settled on super bright screens, which do work okay but need a lot of power.
e-Ink is getting better somewhat, and higher resolution. Color e-ink is pretty slow and doesn't look all that great yet. Maybe it will get bette
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Please, tell us how much you think it will cost so we have a quantifiable scale for exactly how wrong you are.
Alternatively... (Score:2)
Just buy a 3 year old higher end Samsung tablet and throw LineageOS on it and have something that's relatively fast, has a good supply of available parts like a screen or battery if you need, and an operating system that is kept reasonably up to date for many years.
https://lineageos.org/ [lineageos.org]
I still have an original Samsung Galaxy Tab S that's still quite usable 9 years after I bought it. I have replaced the battery twice over the years, but it's now running LineageOS version 19 which is effectively Android 12.
Re:Alternatively... (Score:4, Interesting)
Your solution is for another kind of person. I think Pine's target market is linux desktop users and FOSS enthusiasts who want a coherent experience on the native operating system. If you install LineageOS on a brand tablet you will have to 1. suffer through Android software style of GUI, 2. use the very limited options in f-droid, 3. possibly have to make the hard decision to install the spyware that people get from Google Play so you can have some functionality, 4. install some linux distro in parallel using a chroot solution but hardware support might not be great, and this is also a much less elegant solution than just getting this tablet designed for full hardware support in regular linux distro and enjoy a native OS.
Their offer is not for everyone, but for a particular niche they have a strong selling point. I own a high end Samsung tablet with android for when an unrooted mobile device is required (banking) but it never can be my daily driver. TFA acknowlegdes that PineTab is "not a daily driver or workhorse for most people." I might buy the PineTab, or I might wait a bit more and get the next iteration that can become my workhorse.
Re:Alternatively... (Score:4, Interesting)
Typing this on a PineBook Pro.
You're basically spot on. I've seen a lot of complaints about Pine's offerings because they aren't necessarily as fast or as capable overall when compared to Chromebooks or low end x86 machines. The PineBook Pro wasn't designed to compete with Chromebooks - it was designed to be a Raspberry Pi laptop. I suspect that this is the same niche they're going for with the PineTab - a Raspberry Pi tablet with detachable keyboard suitable for light hacking. And they have a surprising amount of aftermarket support. You can go to Pine64's website and buy a replacement for just about anything on a PineBook Pro except for the main logic board.I suspect that the same will apply once the PineTab gets released.
It's not something that I'd use as a primary computer, but if I were still in college, it would make a great laptop to lug from class to class for note taking.
I'm eagerly awaiting a PineBook Pro analog based on some of the RISC-V stuff they're doing.
Re:Alternatively... (Score:4, Informative)
I'd love to get LineageOS running on my Galaxy Tab A 2017, but alas it's not supported. That's the real problem with Android devices and LineageOS. There're just too many different platforms to support, so only a relative few[1] devices (popular ones often) can even run LineageOS, especially when it comes to older devices. There are some one-off images people have thrown together for the Tab A 2017 over the last couple of years, leaving me without any update path, which is hardly better than just leaving it stock.
I want to love ARM devices and computers. I really do. But it's a mess, especially when it comes to running Linux on them. Even Pine, which prides itself on Linux support struggles with that. And it's not Linux's fault or Pine's fault. It's the whole way the ARM ecosystem works with proprietary bit all through the SoCs. Not sure if I should blame ARM who seems to encourage this kind of fragmentation, or Google who enables it with Android.
[1] despite an impressive list of devices, it's still a small representation of all the random brands of Android phones and tablets out there
RK chips (Score:2)
Ahh the processor of choice for landfill Android devices.
Why Chinese SOC? (Score:1)
The best use for Chinese SOCs is as a heating element of some sort. Maybe they want to market it as a coffee warmer?