The Pixel Slate is my cup of tea, but if it isn’t yours there could be another Chrome OS tablet to choose from with the same Intel chips. MySmartprice found some recent Geekbench browser benchmarks of a device dubbed “Google Rammus” with a motherboard code-named “Shyvana”. Rammus itself isn’t new; that code name surfaced last summer on Chrome Unboxed. This is the first time I’ve seen Shyvana, however.
The benchmark results surfaced yesterday and show a tested device having the same Intel Core i7-8500Y processor as the high-end Pixel Slate model, along with 8 GB of memory and running Android 9 Pie within Chrome OS, just like the Pixel Slate does. There are also results for a Core m3-8300Y model, indicating there might be a range of configurations.
Aside from that, there’s nothing else to be gleaned from these results. That doesn’t mean we can’t take some educated guesses though.
I suspect this device won’t be Google-branded if it even comes to market. Instead, I’m thinking this Chrome tablet will be from Asus, who just got into the tablet game with its Asus Chromebook Tablet CT100. Why? Because several recent code commits from Rammus have approvers from Pegatron, which was spun out of Asus and still builds many of their devices. Additionally, there are also recent Rammus commits with an approver from Asus; note that I’ve hidden the full address.
Update: Chrome Unboxed notes that the Asus Chromebook C434, announced at CES 2019 earlier this month is built on the Rammus board.
One other interesting tidbit: Unlike the Pixel Slate, aka: Nocturne, which has a 3000 x 2000 display, Rammus shows as supporting up to a 1920 x 1080 at the moment. That could change but if it doesn’t, it suggests to me that either this tablet device will likely be less expensive than the Pixel Slate due to a lower panel cost and/or the screen will be smaller than the 12.5-inch Pixel Slate screen. The Asus Chromebook C434 has a 1920 x 1080 display as well, by the way.
Given that there is a working device that can run the Geekbench browser test, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a product launch sooner rather than later for this device.
This is pure speculation based on the limited data, of course, so more to follow as information is found.
