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Following up on yesterday’s finds, we have come across two more commits that fully validate stylus pen input being developed for an upcoming Chromebook codenamed ‘Kevin.’
In these two new commits we, find three interesting things.
- A switch for inserting and removing the pen so the device can respond to the corresponding state of the pen (inserted/off or extracted/active). I don’t know about any of you, but having a stylus without a place to keep it is highly annoying. It’s great to see ‘Kevin’ will likely have a tidy place to stash the pen. (related commit)
- Support for stylus events alongside finger input events. Sounds simple, but this is crucial to a decent UI when you consider the differences between a stylus and your finger. This is not abstract work being done. This alone makes us positive that ‘Kevin’ will have a stow-able stylus. (related commit)
- We feel that this device is hitting early development according to both commits linked above. Note the comments referencing Engineering Validation Testing (or EV Testing or evtesting). This is the first of 3 steps in the engineering process that tests a unit’s function. According to an article found on Quora, here is EVT defined broadly:
EVT – Engineering Validation Test: Can we build several units that function as expected, meeting all functional requirements?
We feel confident that this device is entering production phases. When we’ll see it hit the shelves is still a mystery, but it is at least being tested for production.
As always, we’ll keep digging and reporting on everything we find!
