Snapdragon Chromebook ‘Bubs’ being tested with phone-sized display

Let me be very clear and upfront from the get-go on this one: file this under either speculation or confusion as you read what I’m about to tell you. I don’t have a firm understanding of what is going on or why, but I know that some testing is happening on a Chrome OS baseboard that looks to be based on the Snapdragon 7c and is also currently being tested with a display fit for a phone. Why this is happening or if it points to anything more than a random test is yet to be seen. So, with that firmly squared away, here is what we found over the long weekend.

The first order of business is a bit of clarification on the device we’re dealing with. Little is still known about ‘Bubs’ other than the fact that this board is built off of ‘Trogdor’, the device we expect to show up as the first Snapdragon 7c Chromebook. Going back a bit more, up until December of 2019 we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first Snapdragon Chromebook, but in the form of a device we’ve been tracking for over 2 years at this point. That device is codenamed ‘Cheza’ and it was the real starting point for Snapdragon-powered Chromebooks, based on the Snapdragon 845 that powers phones like the Pixel 3.

‘Trogdor’ became an offshoot of ‘Cheza’ in late spring of 2019, but arrived with a new processor on board in the form of the SC7180 and confused us all at the time. There wasn’t (and still technically isn’t) a Qualcomm chipset with that model number. However, after the Snapdragon Summit in December, it became quite clear that this SC7180 is the Snapdragon 7c and that we should start seeing hardware with this internal setup sometime in 2020; including whatever ‘Trogdor’ and ‘Bubs’ end up being. Since then, we’ve learned little about what we expect from these new Snapdragon-powered Chromebooks.

Now that all the introductions are out of the way, let’s talk about what we’re seeing in these latest commits that again have us scratching our heads around the Chrome Unboxed office. In this first commit message, we’re seeing a particular display being configured and enabled for use with ‘Bubs’ specifically:

CHROMIUM: config: Enable Visionox rm69299 panel

The panel is used by the SC7180 IDP board (aka ‘bubs’).

Doing a bit of looking around, we found specific info on this Visionox display and it has a few characteristics that make it quite interesting. First up, it is AMOLED and we’ve only seen one other AMOLED display in a Chromebook up to this point: the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. The second piece is way more confusing/interesting, though, and that is the display resolution. It is listed as 1080×2248, short side first, and that simply isn’t the norm when talking about laptop screens. Up to this point, we’ve only seen devices that are pure tablets get listed with this sort of resolution, so we’re inclined to put ‘Bubs’ firmly in the tablet category.

But it gets a bit more confusing if we keep digging. In yet another commit, we’re seeing this panel being referred to once again, specifically in the included .dts file for ‘Bubs’:

panel@0 { compatible = “visionox,rm69299-1080p-display”; reg = <0>; vdda-supply = <&vreg_l8c_1p8>; vdd3p3-supply = <&vreg_l18a_2p8>; pinctrl-names = “default”; pinctrl-0 = <&disp_pins>;

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Again, this display is being tested and added to ‘Bubs’ quite clearly and in multiple places, so that means there’s likely a reason behind the effort. Probably the most interesting element of all this is the elongated resolution of this panel at 1080×2248. That is a screen ratio that only makes sense on a pocketable handheld. As phone screens have increased in size, it seems we’ve hit the peak width users are willing to deal with, so we’ve seen devices grow in height only, making the 16:9 aspect ratio a thing of the past. It is nothing to see 18:9, 19:9 or even 20:9 phones out in the market right now. This works to a certain extent in a small device for your pocket, but will not translate at all to a tablet or a laptop. Imagine how limiting a 19:9, short and wide screen would feel on a laptop. That’s the aspect ratio of this ‘Bubs’ tablet we’re looking at.

So, what is going on, then? Are we looking at a Chrome OS phone? A oddly-shaped tablet? Or something totally different? I don’t really have an answer for that right now, but I can tell you this is a very strange development. It is possible Qualcomm ships this development board with this particular screen for testing, but that doesn’t make much sense as we’ve recently made a strong case for the SC7180 that ‘Bubs’ is built on being the Snapdragon 7c, and the 7c, 8c, and 8cx chips are built for laptops. They aren’t built for phones. So, why would Qualcomm ship a phone screen for development on this chipset?

These are all good questions, and I’d bet you have a few as well. I don’t want to pretend we’re looking at a Chrome OS phone, but I also can’t find counter evidence to completely rule that out, either. At this point, we simply don’t know what is going on with ‘Bubs’ and why this particular display has been added to the mix. Rest assured we are digging for further info and as soon as we find anything, we’ll let you all know.