The Samsung Chromebook Pro is arguably the most popular device of 2017 and rightfully so. The super-bright, high-res display, 3:2 aspect ratio, onboard stylus and sleek design make it a unique bird among an ever-growing number of Chromebooks on the market.
While not perfect, the Samsung Chromebook Pro offers one of the most well-rounded Chrome OS/Android experiences available. Google’s Pixelbook is currently the only device that comes to mind that trumps the Pro. One of the Samsung Pro’s biggest edges over Google’s flagship is the price. You can pick one up from Amazon or Samsung at $100 off making it half the price of Pixelbook.
If there was one feature, in particular, that was thoughtlessly omitted from the Pro it is a backlit keyboard. I can’t begin to tally the number of consumers who have expressed their disdain towards the Pro for this “oversight.”
I can imagine that this one, seemingly insignificant option pushed many buyers to the ASUS Chromebook Flip C302 which not only offers a backlit keyboard but doubles the storage to 64GB. Samsung has since released their own 64GB model and that’s great but consumers want what they want and they want an illuminated keyboard.
Well, it only took a year but Samsung may finally heed the cry of consumers. Yesterday, we uncovered the addition of a keyboard backlight to the device board ‘Caroline’, a.k.a., the Samsung Chromebook Pro.
caroline : Add EL lamp driver & control keyboard backlight.
– Add MAXIM Max14521 EL lamp driver
– Add commands & hooks to control keyboard backlight
At this point, it is unclear whether Samsung is producing a second run of the current Pro with the addition or if we might see a new variant of the Chromebook.
We know there is a more powerful version in the works and from the information we have gathered, that device will be released in the very near future. That leads me to believe that Samsung could be beefing up the Pro for a second run at the consumer market but only time will tell.
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Source: Chromium repository
