Pine64 has confirmed that its open source e-ink tablet will be making a comeback.
of pine note was announced in 2021, building on the success of non-SBC devices such as pine phone (and later Pro models), pine taband pine book device. As with most Pine64 devices, software support is primarily a community effort.
However, only a few developer units have been sold to date, primarily to enthusiasts within the open source community who have the knowledge and desire to run a modern Linux OS on their hardware and adapt it to an e-ink display. Sold by.
This process took time, as Pine64’s community blogger explains:
“PineNote was a chicken-and-egg problem because the cost of manufacturing the device was so high (e-paper screens are still expensive, unfortunately) and there was a risk of manufacturing a unit that didn’t have a working Linux OS. I was in a situation where it didn’t sell.”
But the proverbial egg has finally hatched.
PineNote + Debian = dream team
of pine note It is currently powered by the reliable Debian-based OS developed by Maximilian Weigand. This is explained as follows “Not just a bare-bones OS, but a truly everyday-usable, ‘well-functioning’ system.”” According to the Pine64 blog.
In addition to the GNOME desktop, the UI is said to use several extensions designed to work well on e-ink displays. Pre-installed software includes: Xournal++ to take notes, Firefox for web browsing, and Foliate For reading e-books, etc.
existing pine note Owners can download and flash new OS images onto their devices to assist with testing.
Original PineNote specification
In terms of specs, pine note offers a 10.1-inch e-ink display that supports up to 16 levels of grayscale. It runs at a resolution of 1404×1872 (227 DPI) and is powered by a quad-core RK3566 SoC, 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB eMMC.
It also includes two microphones, two speakers, one USB Type-C port for charging (and data), and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. A front light (36 levels of warm and cool lighting) makes it easy to read and take notes in the dark, and there’s also a physical page turn and eraser button.
Future production may have some issues minor After receiving feedback from owners, we clarified the differences from the original model. Notably, it will ship with a passive (non-charging) stylus rather than the current active stylus.
Touch and stylus input are the main selling points. pine notepositions it as a free alternative to leading e-ink note-taking devices like . Notable 2, onyx boxand amazon scribe.
But unlike those locked down devices, pine note You can use it for more than just reading e-books and jotting down lecture notes, especially since it runs a regular Linux distribution on a relatively high-performance SoC.
When can I purchase PineNote?
There is no exact date as to when this will happen. pine note Sales will resume, but only with “officially determined plans for the start of production” now in place.
The price has not yet been determined, but due to the movement of early adopters, pine note It costs $399. This included a magnetic cover and an EMR pen stylus, but Pine64 said at the time that both the cover and stylus would be sold separately at general sale, so keep that in mind.
But isn’t it exciting?
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