More and more details are arriving for the upcoming Chromebook known only as ‘Hatch’ at this point. We already knew it is being based on the Comet Lake 9th-gen Intel chipset and that it will have a fingerprint scanner, but today we’ve found full evidence that ‘Hatch’ will also employ a garaged stylus.
In this commit, the language is pretty straightforward:
hatch: Add stylus config
Add stylus config for OS stylus UI
What is even more interesting in this commit is the addition of a .yaml file that spells out a few additional details for this upcoming Chromebook. In that file, you can easily see the following:
chromeos:
devices:
– $device-name: “hatch”
$fw-name: “Hatch”
products:
– $key-id: “HATCH”
skus:
– $sku-id: 255 # Unprovisioned
$stylus-category: “internal”
config: *common_config
– $sku-id: 1
$stylus-category: “internal”
config: *common_config
From this, we can easily see that ‘Hatch’ will not only be getting stylus support, but “internal” stylus support. Everyone has their preference on this, but I’d take a garaged stylus every single time when compared with a larger pen that has no place to live. I am all too often left searching for the pen when I actually need to use it and love the fact that internal styli give you a solid, repeatable place to keep them.
Finally, from the same .yaml file you can see that ‘Hatch’ will also be getting a backlit keyboard, too. The inclusion of this line – has-keyboard-backlight: “1” – is enough to make that much clear.
So, we now have the latest processors, backlit keys, stowable stylus, fingerprint scanner, and daisy-chained multi-display support all confirmed for ‘Hatch’. If you ask me, this one is shaping up to be a really impressive Chromebook already. Throw in a crisp, bright screen and a nice, thin form factor and we could have yet another desirable device on our hands.
We’ve just begun to really delve into the details of ‘Hatch’, but we’re hoping to at least unearth a bit about the manufacturer and details about the screen and RAM pretty soon. All in all, this one has been in development for just about 5 months, so it will be at least the fall before we see it truly break cover. It sure seems to be shaping up to be a bit of a beast.
