Recent bug reports within the Chromium testing community have turned up a couple new devices running Chrome OS. There’s the expected netbook from Acer, different from the ZGA we saw a while back, and a mystery device referred to as Seaboard that may or may not be a Chrome OS tablet.
I noticed Seaboard when looking at the Chromium bug logs, and it seems that Chrome Story just noticed the exact same thing, and did a little digging. The device is Tegra 2-based, has an Atmel MXT touchscreen, has a gig of RAM, two USB ports, and HDMI. Sounds pretty tablet-ish to me, though there’s conflicting information elsewhere, such as “lid switch,” which is ambiguous, and references that seem to indicate a physical keyboard. Perhaps a “convertible,” then? Otherwise, why a touchscreen? At any rate it seems to be a real-life device, not just a spec.
And as a quick note: Seaboard has been around for months, but I didn’t see much on it outside of the Chromium reports. It’s not new new, but details are emerging.
We’ve already had a few false alarms regarding Acer and Chrome OS — it’s made some promises, but no actual product has appeared. But that doesn’t mean their Chromebook doesn’t exist. We saw the ZGA model pop up in bug reports, but it hasn’t been seen in ages. It seems to have been replaced by… wait for it… the ZGB.
So what’s known about this new mystery machine? Not much. But a little bit of information has trickled out via the same channel (bug reports), giving it a 1366×768 screen (suitable for 12-15″ screens, roughly) and an Atom processor. This last based on the fact that the laptop has a separate HDMI controller, which wouldn’t be necessary on an AMD rig — and it’s not likely to be an ARM device.
Nothing in the logs indicates an imminent release (though nothing expressly says otherwise, either), so for now let’s just consider this “beta” hardware, subject to change at any time.
[via Tom’s Hardware]