PineTab 2 is Another Try at a Linux-Based Tablet, Without the 2020 Supply Crunch
hubie writes:
10-inch tablet with detachable keyboard case should be available in early 2023:
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." While Linux support was scarce early on, development for RK3566 is "booming," and it's now a prime candidate for mobile operating systems, Erecinski writes.
[...] 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."
The original PineTab eventually shipped, but Erecinski describes it as "a victim of COVID and its fallout," and its "death" as a choice to focus on the PinePhone. Pine64 later iterated on the phone to deliver the PinePhone Pro. As with the PineBook and PinePhone, context is key: This is a device meant for tinkering, experimenting, or using as a truly low-power spare/alternate device, not a daily driver or workhorse for most people. Those who know themselves enough to order, however, should keep an eye out early next year.
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