Yesterday we introduced the PinePhone Pro, the Pine64's new smartphone. Today it is the turn of another mobile device of this company, the PineNote Developer Edition tablet. A tablet that will allow you to install the operating system that you like the most, since it does not come with any pre-installed, and is especially aimed at software developers, as its name suggests.
A very hackable tablet to be able to "mold" it to your liking and with a large e-Ink screen, or electronic ink. Unfortunately, there are not too many tablets with this type of panel. This is one of them, which is a luxury for those who want to use these devices as an eBook Reader, so that it does not generate so much visual fatigue and is an experience more similar to paper. On the other hand, it also has support for using a digital pen.
This tablet was presented on dates close to the PinePhone Pro, during last summer, and the orders began to reach the first developers during this past December. But nevertheless, now they can buy it anyone for a price of $ 399.
Technical characteristics of PineNote
The Pine64 PineNote tablet has a technical characteristics which can make it a nightmare for inexperienced users or bring great freedom to developers and more advanced users:
- SoC: Rockchip RK3466 with quad core ARM Cortex-A55 at 1.8 Ghz and Mali-G52 MP2 GPU. A chip manufactured in 22nm and with decent performance.
- Principal memory: 4 GB of low consumption LPDDR4 RAM.
- Storage: 128 GB eMMC type flash memory.
- Screen: 10.3″ touch screen with a resolution of 1404×1872 px (227 dpi), and panel with e-Ink technology (electronic ink) with 16 gray levels. With impact and scratch resistant glass.
- Battery: LiIon 4000 mAh for a long autonomy.
- Ports: Uses USB-C (2.0) port for data and charging, Bluetooth 5, WiFi 5.
- Others: Of course, it has a sound system with microphones (4x DMIC) and 1.3W stereo speakers, with a Wacom EMR Pen Digitizer (optional), G-Sensor for rotation, and magnetic case with hall sensor (optional) .
- housing: quality finish, with 7mm magnesium alloy.
- Operating System: It does not have a pre-installed operating system, you can choose the one you prefer. It only includes a boot loader (bootloader) that will allow you to boot multiple systems or distros. Eye! There are no GNU/Linux distributions prepared for PineNote, those who want to install one must adapt them (there are already some developers who have been able to do it with Alpine Linux, Debian, Arch Linux, etc.). Obviously, if you want hardware support you have to do it yourself...
In short, a mobile device that could be labeled as "experimental", for developers…