Most of you must be already aware of Pine64’s flagship products PinePhone and Pinebook (or Pinebook Pro).
PineTab was planned to be made available back in 2019— however, PinePhone and Pinebook production was prioritized over it. Also, due to the factory lines closing for COVID-19 pandemic, the plan for PineTab was further postponed.
Finally, you will be happy to know that you can now pre-order the PineTab Linux tablet for just $100.
Even though PineTab is meant for early adopters, I’ll give you a brief description of its specifications and what you can expect it to do.
PineTab specification
PineTab is a Linux tablet for $100 with which you can also attach a keyboard and some other modules to make the most out of it.
So, for just $100, it isn’t aiming to be “just another tablet” but something more functional for the users who prefer to have a useful tablet.
Before we talk more about it, let’s run down through the specifications:
- Display: 10-inch 720p IPS Screen
- Quad-core A64 SoC
- 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM
- 2 MP front-facing camera and 5 MP rear camera
- 64 GB eMMC flash storage
- SD Card support
- USB 2.0, USB-OTG, Digital video output, Micro USB
- 6000mAh Battery
You can also add a magnetic backlit keyboard with PineTab for an additional $20.
You can see it in action here:
For the first batch of PineTab, they are shipping the tablet with UBports Ubuntu Touch. In their recent blog post, Pine64 also clarified why they chose UBports Ubuntu Touch:
The reason for this choice being that Ubuntu Touch works well for a traditional tablet use-case and, at the same time, converts into a more traditional desktop experience when the magnetic keyboard is attached.
They’ve also mentioned that the PineTab’s software will be convergent with both PinePhone and PineBook.
PineTab Expansion Options
To expand the functionality of PineTab, there’s an adapter board available on which you will be able to attach the expansions you want.
The adapter board will already be present inside, you just need to remove the back cover, work on a single screw to swap/add expansions.
The following expansions will be available to start with:
- M.2 SATA SSD add-on
- M.2 LTE (and GPS) add-on
- LoRa module add-on
- RTL-SDR module add-on
It is worth noting that you only use any one of the expansions at a time no matter how many expansions you have attached to the board.
Some extensions like LTE or LoRa module will probably make PineTab a great point-of-sales terminal as well.
As of now, there’s no information on what it would cost per add-on for the expansion board — but hopefully we’ll get to know more about the details right before the pre-order starts.
How to get PineTab Linux tablet
PineTab is now available for pre-order. If you are planning to get one, you should hurry up. From my experience with Pine devices, the pre-order might close in a couple of days. You can order it from their website:
What are your thoughts on PineTab? Are you going to order one when it goes live? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
