The $89 Pinebook ARM laptop was supposed to go on sale in February.
Sadly, the month came and went without so much as a peep from Pine64, the company behind the Pinebook.
But today we’ve some good news. The device hasn’t evaporated into the ether.
As reported by Nick Schaer over at gamehelp.guru, four images of a prototype Pinebook — yep, this isn’t the final thing, hence the dodgy sticker on the front— recently surfaced online.
These images reveal a little more information about the Pinebook specifications, their build, and what they offer.
What is the Pinebook?
The Pinebook is a cheap and cheerful laptop computer created by Pine64. It is built around their $15 Pine A64 single-board computer (think Raspberry Pi).
Two models, a $89 11.6-inch Pinebook and a $99 14 inch Pinebook, are to be available, both sport a clamshell design with full keyboard, trackpad and IPS displays.
The core Pinebook specs:
- 64-Bit Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.2 Ghz
- 2 GB RAM
- Dual Core Mali 400 MP2 Graphics
- 16 GB eMMC
- Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
- 10,000 mAh LiPo battery
Based on the prototype images we also now know that these devices will have:
- 2x USB
- HDMI Out
- MicroSD card slot
- Headphone jack
- 0.3MP (640×480) front webcam
The following gratuitous glimpse at the Pinebook’s internals reveal just how one makes a laptop from a maker board:
Pine book Release Date
We’ve reached out to the folks at Pine64 to see if they can offer any updates. Otherwise, sadly, the images aside this is all the available information on the Pinebook for now.
As for a Pinebook release date that’s still uncertain, but it’s reassuring to see that the diminutive device hasn’t disappeared.
Still no word on which operating system the device will ship with, but Ubuntu, Android and ChromiumOS builds for the Pine64 board are available.
P.S. About the Windows key — it’s likely that Pine64 are using off-the-shelf components to keep costs as low as possible. They may, possibly, depending on the OS, slap a sticker over this, but this is something we can all easily do ourselves.
- Source: GameHelp Guru