From the time we first saw the Galaxy Chromebook, it was pretty clear that Samsung was working with a singular model. The device I’m typing this post on right now is that model, and it is equipped with a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage. Those are beastly stats for a Chromebook to be sure, but there have been rumors and questions around an even higher-spec version coming out that we’ve never had evidence of up to this point.
To be fair, the internals in this device need little in the way of upgrades when we’re talking about speed, memory, or storage. However, there’s always a small subset of users that want the biggest, best, fastest machine possible. A Samsung Galaxy Chromebook with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of NVMe storage would fit that bill and cost a substantial amount of cash, but there’s just been no indication that Samsung will go there at this point. Even with ASUS dropping a similar spec device (i5/16GB/512GB) in the $999 ASUS Flip C436 just yesterday, there’s been no official indication Samsung will counter with anything similar.
That is, until today. We’ve just uncovered a commit from the Chromium Repositories that shows ‘Kohaku’ (the development code name for the Galaxy Chromebook) getting an added variation with a 16GB RAM on board. In the message of the commit and again in the Makefile.inc file, you can see the 16GB RAM chip being added next to the existing 8GB version:
UPSTREAM: mb/google/kohaku: Add LPDDR 16G 2133 support
SPD_SOURCES = LP_8G_2133 # 0b000
SPD_SOURCES += LP_16G_2133 # 0b001
When we’ll actually see this addition to the Galaxy Chromebook lineup is as ambiguous as ever, so if you are wanting the latest from Samsung and aren’t sure that you really require that much RAM, you may not want to hold out for this one. We could see it arrive in a few weeks or it may be quite a bit later in the year before the option to upgrade the RAM becomes available. We’d freely assume this RAM addition will be paired up with a storage upgrade as well, but that is yet to be seen.
The bigger issue with the quite-excellent Samsung Galaxy Chromebook seems to revolve around the battery life. We’re obviously still testing this out for ourselves and waiting on the arrival of Chrome OS 81 in the Stable Channel that is due at some point today. Perhaps some of the early reports on exceptionally-poor battery life could be mitigated with a few software tweaks. Time will tell, but for what its worth so far, this Chromebook is the real deal and the addition of an even more capable version is interesting for sure. We’ll keep an eye on this commit to see if we can discern when this additional model may arrive from Samsung, so stay tuned.
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