New ‘Nightfury’ device hints at second Samsung Galaxy Chromebook

We spend a lot of time tracking new devices in the Chromium repositories. As of late, that has become a full-time job with dozens of new Chromebooks in development and more being added every week. While each and every new device is exciting, occasionally a Chromebook pops up that literally puts us on the edge of our seats. My latest discovery just happens to be one of those devices.

Added just last Friday, the new board ‘Nightfury’ immediately caught my attention because I happen to be a fan of DreamWorks’ “How to train your dragon” and its follow-up movies TV series. Yes, I’m a big kid but I have children so it’s excusable. Anyway, the new board is built off of the ‘Hatch’ baseboard which means it should be powered by Intel’s Comet Lake processors. That, in and of itself is exciting because it means that Nightfury is at least a mid-range Chromebook if not a flagship-caliber device.

Digging into the few commits attached to Nightfury, it appears that we have what is probably another convertible device with a backlit keyboard but there isn’t much more to derive at this time. However, one particular detail caught my eye that leads me to believe that this could be another Chromebook from Samsung. An email in the commit just happens to belong to someone from Samsung. This person isn’t the owner of the commit but instead a reviewer which isn’t proof positive that Nightfury will be made by Samsung but a closer look at this individual’s activity in the repository carries a lot of weight on the side of my argument. Nearly every commit this email/committer is attached to is on devices from Samsung. In the mix, I found Caroline (Samsung Chromebook Pro), Nautilus (Samsung Chromebook Plus V2), and last but not least, Kohaku which is the soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy Chromebook.

You may be thinking the same thing I was when I made this connection. “Why would Samsung launch another Comet Lake convertible?” Then, I remembered the Samsung Chromebook Plus. Comet Lake includes more than just U-series processors. In the family, you’ll also find a Celeron and a Pentium Gold chip that fits the bill for a slightly less premium Chromebook like the Plus V2 which is also powered by a Celeron processor as well as a Core m3 CPU from Intel. All that combined has me nearly convinced that Samsung is indeed working on a mid-range Chromebook and given the buzz around their latest device, the Nightfury device could very well join the Galaxy Chromebook family when it emerges at some point this year. We’ll be watching Nightfury closely as development continues and hopefully, we’ll get to see a second Samsung Galaxy Chromebook in 2020.

Source: Chromium Repository