And the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks just keep on coming

For many years, we tracked the development of the early stages of Qualcomm bringing their silicon to Chrome OS. It was a very, very long road that started all the way back in December of 2017 and finally came to fruition in October of 2020 when we first got our hands on the Acer Spin 513. When that device showed up in the office, it was one of only a few confirmed Snapdragon Chromebooks in development and it was unclear how many would join it.

Fast forward to today and we now have a dozen Snapdragon-powered Chromebooks either released, announced or in development. While it isn’t the gaudy numbers we’re seeing with Intel Jasper Lake-powered devices, a dozen Chromebooks under one baseboard banner is still quite a few and most of them have appeared in just the last 6 months. It was at that same time that we saw the fist hints of devices like ‘Coachz’ (the HP Chromebook x2 11) and since then, new devices have shown up with great regularity.

Today’s new addition: ‘Kingoftown’

Today, we add ‘Kingoftown’ to the list of Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks we know of in development. I’d reckon this new board won’t follow in the footsteps of ‘Coachz’, ‘Homestar’, ‘Wormdingler’ or ‘MrBland’ as those devices end up branching off from ‘Strongbad’ as detachable tablets. Instead, this new ‘Kingoftown’ board will likely end up as a more-standard Chromebook in the vein of the Acer Chromebook Spin 513. Only, from the looks of another commit, this one won’t have the convertible parts needed for things like tablet mode or presentation mode.

My guess is ‘Kingoftown’ will end up as an EDU-focused Chromebooks based on battery info I was able to obtain from the scant info about this board in the repositories. In an update to the battery info for ‘Kingoftown’, the developers have been a bit more tricky and don’t put the manufacturer info plainly there for all to see. Instead, the manufacturer is hidden by a random number (333-2D-0D-A) as you can see below:

Obviously, this doesn’t return any direct info if you search for DynaPack and that manuf_name. It did return a few other interesting tidbits, however, and it doesn’t take long to put together the clues. Searching just 333-2D-0D-A brought back another commit where battery info was being adjusted for two other Chromebooks: ‘Drawcia’ and ‘Lantis’. Cross-referencing that back to our running list of devices in development, I remembered that these two Chromebooks are both HP-made devices. Thus, ‘Kingoftown’ will likely be an HP Chromebook and since HP’s main consumer Snapdragon Chromebook already exists in the x2 11, I’d wager this one will be headed to the EDU sector.

So, ‘Kingoftown’ won’t be surprising anyone with fancy features or interesting tweaks: it’s just a straightforward Chromebook with a Snapdragon 7c inside. Here’s hoping that HP decides to add some nice outer parts to this equation like a great keyboard, solid build quality and bright screen. Without the flare of a detaching base, a magnetic pen, fingerprint scanner or dynamic 3:2 aspect ratio, this Chromebook could get very boring, very quickly. If HP manages to include things like a sturdy chassis, glass trackpad and a nice screen, it could still be interesting if the price is right. We’ll keep an eye out for more on this one.