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The existence of the true, Chromebook Flip 2 (a 10-inch followup to the original Chromebook Flip) from ASUS has made for an interesting ride so far.
First, we broke the start of ‘Cave’ from ASUS back in June of 2016, assuming it would be the Flip 2, only to find that in January it would be released as the Chromebook Flip C302.
Larger and much more capable, the Flip C302 didn’t really quench our thirst for a true update to the original Flip. Sure, it is a fantastic Chromebook, but nothing has met the super-portable footprint we loved so much in the original.
What About ‘Bob’?
Not that long ago, we uncovered a Chromebook in production that looked like a pretty clear successor.
‘Bob’ was and is the upcoming Chromebook Flip, but we haven’t seen or heard much out of it lately. Though we were and still are convinced this is the Chromebook Flip 2, we haven’t found anything to give us any release windows.
What we do know at this point is the screen is the same 10.1-inch, 1280×800 (16:10) display. There are chances that it will be brighter as the screen being tested in the commits has variants that range all the way up to 450 nits.
Additionally, from our initial coverage on ‘Bob’, we know that this is based on the same chipset as the Samsung Chromebook Plus, which means we’ll see a definite performance boost over the original Flip.
The Samsung Chromebook Plus gets along quite well, and it is pushing right at 4-times the pixels this new Flip will be dealing with. With the lighter load, I think this new Flip could be a really good performer.
Breaking Cover
As I said, we haven’t heard much on a release date. But that looks to be changing, thanks to an email we received this morning from our friends over at Notebook Italia.
Details are still a bit lacking at this point, but we wanted to take opportunity to turn the light back on ‘Bob’ again: or more precisely, as it looks to be known moving forward, on the ASUS Flip C101.
BUY THE ASUS CHROMEBOOK FLIP C302 From Amazon
Notebook Italia seems to be in possession of a render image of the device, and they describe it as trustworthy, being from the same person that provided them with credible leaks of the ASUS VivoBook TP203 and the ASUS ZenBook Pro UX550.
From this photo and a lengthy description accompanying it, Notebook Italia claims that we’ll still be dealing with an all-aluminum chassis in basically the same footprint and weight as the original Flip (15.6mm thick and 890g). Additionally, they add that it will be a satin finish, so I’d assume that will look similar to the newer Flip C302, and that is a good thing.
I’d expect the keyboard and trackpad to be quite similar to the original as well, given that the physical dimensions of the device will be the same. ASUS really maximized space the first time around, so there’s literally not much room for improvement.
The article goes on to claim that the new Flip will be rated for 16 hours of battery life! If that is even close to accurate, this could be the biggest win for this new, diminutive offering from ASUS.
In the article, they don’t claim a particular processor, but we can pretty firmly assert that the Rockchip RK3399 will be in play here from the earlier-mentioned Chrome Unboxed articles around commits in the Chromium repositories. With so many less pixels to push than the Samsung Chromebook Plus, great battery life is quite likely.
16 hours? Let’s say I remain skeptically optimistic.
So, when?
With renders leaking out, it makes sense that it won’t be too much longer before we see this device at least announced.
Notebook Italia speculates we could see it made official at MWC (which starts February 27) or Computex (May 30). That is likely as most Chromebook manufacturers don’t plan stand-alone events to announce their products.
The ASUS Flip C302 was released at CES this year without much flare, so we’ll be keeping our eyes out for any news at MWC next week.
