New Chromebook ‘Xol’ emerges with an Assistant Key built in

I know, I know: it’s basically impossible not to draw a few conclusions from that headline. I’m fighting the same instincts as I write these words, but I can’t deny what I’ve stumbled upon this morning, and I can’t 100% tell you that what we’re all thinking isn’t true. But I also don’t have proof of that hope, either. Not really, anyway, so let’s look at what I’ve found and maybe speculate a few things together, shall we?

An Assistant key of some sort for ‘Xol’

I won’t bury the lede, here, so let’s get the main stuff out of the way. This morning, I came across a file in a commit in the Chromium Repositories that makes reference to a new Chromebook getting a hardware-mapped Assistant key. That Chromebook is being developed under the code name ‘Xol’ and it is quite new, only beginning life on January 3rd of this year.

As we all know by now, Chromebooks with an Assistant key up to this point have historically been made by Google. The most recent device we’ve seen this same type of activity on was the ill-fated ‘Halvor’ that never emerged as an actual device. For months we talked about that device and there were quite a few reasons to believe that ‘Halvor’ might have been a Pixelbook that simply didn’t make the cut. But that was back in 2020, and with the pandemic raging on at that point, there’s really no telling what was planned and what actually happened behind the scenes. All we know is ‘Halvor’ was fully axed in November of 2021.

But the same exact file existed for that device, and the Assistant key was plainly, clearly a part of the plan for ‘Halvor’ even if it didn’t make it out of development. So, what does that mean for ‘Xol’? Frankly, we have no idea. It’s simply too early in this Chromebook’s life cycle to determine who is behind it, what it will be, and why it exists with a dedicated Assistant key.

Some caveats to consider with ‘Xol’

First, if you are paying attention, you’ll notice ‘Xol’ is based off of ‘Brya’. ‘Brya’ is the main baseboard for all 12th-gen Intel Chromebooks. Why, then, would a brand-new device be in development with 12th-gen processors when we’re about to see 14th-gen devices hitting shelves with Chromebooks like the ASUS ExpertBook CX54?

Well, ‘Brya’ is also the baseboard for the very-similar 13th-gen Raptor Lake Intel Chips as we see in the Acer Chromebook Spin 714. That device in particular has the same code name for both the 12th and 13th-gen variants. And with these curiosities in mind, I looked to see if I could at least identify the specific chip in ‘Xol’, and at least that part of the puzzle is clear. This one will be based on the Intel’s 13th-gen hardware:

Now, why would a new device not be started in 2024 with the Intel Core Ultra chips? I have no idea, but I think we haven’t seen the best of 13th-gen just yet. Raptor Lake CPUs are fast, proven, and reliable: things we can’t yet say about Core Ultra. Whatever ‘Xol’ is, if it is important to the Chromebook ecosystem, I’m not bothered at all for it to stick with the very stable, well-known 13th-gen processor family.

Secondly, we don’t know what the addition of an Assistant key even means for a Chromebook at this point. As Bard was coming to the aid of the ailing Assistant, Google up and changed it all to Gemini and that AI is in the process of slowly replacing the Google Assistant on Android as we speak. I’d imagine Google’s move to bring more AI to Chromebooks and Chromebook Plus specifically will involve Gemini in big ways, so this Assistant key could be a Gemini key by the time it actually arrives.

And I want to be clear: there’s no guarantee at all that the inclusion of an Assistant key means we’re looking at a Google-made Chromebook. With Chromebook Plus wanting to leverage AI more (though we’re unsure where we are in that process at the moment), I could see multiple Chromebook manufacturers wanting to build a Chromebook Plus device with a dedicated key for whatever the AI assistant on Chromebooks is called down the road. If AI is to be a big part of the story moving forward, the inclusion of a keyboard key is by no means an indictment that ‘Xol’ is the next Pixelbook.

Could it be? Yes – maybe – but I’m still in the camp that believes Google is out of the 1st-party Chromebook game for now. Maybe this is a partnership with a manufacturer or simply a Chromebook maker ready to build the first Chromebook Plus with a little hardware to take advantage of what we hope is a lot of useful AI features soon to be included in ChromeOS. There’s just not enough to go on at this point, but as always, we’ll keep digging and report back when we find more.