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Samsung Chromebook Pro Companion Device With Higher-End Specs Possible

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by Gabriel Brangers
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pdp_feature_03_02_1280The Samsung Chromebook Pro crashed onto the scene last week and has been making waves ever since.  With a highly polished design, this still-unofficial device has all the right moves. The yet-to-be seen RK3399 ARM processor, a phenomenal display and Chrome OS’s first ever stylus all packed in to make – well let’s be honest – a gorgeous piece of hardware.

I mean seriously, just look at it.

What if the recently leaked Chromebook Pro (or as we call it, ‘Kevin’) is just one member of a family of high-end devices set to be released by Samsung?




We have been following a new device in development codenamed ‘Caroline‘. We don’t have a lot of details so far, but we do know this is a Skylake-based Chromebook. We also know that it appears to have a convertible form-factor just like the Samsung Chromebook Pro.

There is one more feature ‘Caroline’ shares with the Chromebook Pro: A stylus.

This, in and of itself, doesn’t lend much to the argument that ‘Caroline’ is another Samsung device. On the other hand, looking at the total picture, we can make a strong case that this device is the Chromebook Pro’s big sister.

First, the stylus.

The ARM-based Samsung Chromebook Pro will be the first device to feature a Wacom active stylus/digitzer. Now, we do know that broader stylus support is being added to Chromium OS. But, this is the first Chromebook to implement that technology.

pdp_feature_03_01_1280Aside from a possible Lenovo device, ‘Caroline’ is the only other Chromebook in development showing stylus support. While I’m sure we will see more and more of these devices in the future, Samsung will be the first.

Second, the email.

If you take a look at the commit for the ‘Caroline’ stylus, you will find the author has a Samsung email address.  I know this isn’t definitive proof that this is a Samsung device, but it does add another common thread between ‘Caroline’ and the Chromebook Pro. We saw a large number of commits from Samsung email addresses in the development of The Chromebook Pro. Also, I spent a good amount of time and coffee researching Samsung’s S-pen and stylus devices. To the best of my knowledge, they do not market their pens to other manufacturers.




For a Samsung employee to be adding stylus function to a Chromebook makes us feel quite confident that this is a Samsung stylus in a Samsung device.

Third, the Samsung Chromebook 2

I know what you’re thinking. What in the world does the Samsung 2 have to do with anything? I’ll tell you. Intel and Exynos. If ‘Caroline’ is a Samsung Core M Chromebook, it wouldn’t be the company’s first run at making side-by-side ARM and Intel devices. In my opinion, I think it’s a smart move. The upcoming RockChip version of the Samsung Chromebook Pro looks amazing and I am sure it will perform very well. But, even if it beats the new MediaTek found in the Acer R13, it still wouldn’t be a match for a Skylake device.

pdp_feature_08_02_1280In the leaked images of the Samsung Chromebook Pro, we saw mention of a proprietary battery-saving application. If this application can be used on a Skylake device, I’m sold. To this day, the only real complaint I have with the HP 13 G1 is the much-worse-than-advertised battery life.

With continuing improvements to Chrome OS’s use of the Skylake architecture, reduced power consumption of the Chrome browser, and possibly an OEM app that will save battery, a Core M convertible device would be hard to beat.

So, there you have it.

It seems ‘Caroline’ could very well be an even higher-end follow up or addition to the Samsung Chromebook Pro line-up. As I said last week, I wouldn’t swear that this is a Samsung device but it will take some pretty hard evidence to convince me that it’s not. Either way, I’m keeping a close eye on this Chromebook in hopes to find out more.

  • ARM is the future for Chromebooks and for Samsung, if they want to be successful in the long term. Intel got scared by the initial success of ARM Chromebooks so they invested a lot in supporting Chromebooks in the past couple of years, and there are the usual “good friends” of Intel who will do whatever project Intel asks them to do (like Asus). A good device is not only about x86-optimized performance, it’s about Performance/Usability per Power used and per actual price of the hardware. An ultra thin and light Intel device with long battery life is not possible (see HP Chromebook 13). It’s about the overall bill of materials of the device and the profit margin that the device maker can keep for themself. More profit there is for the device maker, more they will want to invest in marketing for the device. More profits there are, more happy distributors will be, the more they will make sure it’s successful throughought the market. ARM devices distribute profits throughout the supply chain, while Intel devices concentrate most of the profits in Intel’s bank account mainly (and Microsoft).

    What we want is to see Chromebooks kill Macbooks and the Intel/Windows10 Laptop market. We want to see massive amounts of Chromebooks take over the market. We want to see Chromebooks dominate the market. This can only be done using ARM, it will enable faster innovation, more competition, better prices, and in turn it will also provide better web apps, realizing the cloud computing thin client dream, finally. We need to realize the $100 Laptop dream also because every person on the planet deserves an awesome laptop. If Samsung wants to re-conquer the laptop market and become the major force in the future of the laptop market, they better focus all their energies on their ARM Chromebook strategy.

    • Wow. Not sure I understand everything you’ve said, but, having been an AMD supporter, I definitely agree that Intel needs competition and Chromebooks are providing an opportunity for the ARM market to compete in the desktop space.

    • Konstantinos

      Totally, agree! We already have the first cracks in the WINTEL monopoly with Android/Chromebook. I don’t regard iOS/OSX crack because Apple is worse black box/patent troll than Microsoft and Intel together!
      Now that ARM CPUs are becoming strong for PC use we can say goodbye to the Intel ripoff of expensive i cores or cheap-shit Atom/braswell celeron CPUs that Intel has flooded the market with in order to kill the ARM CPUs…

      • Konstantinos

        I meant to say “cheap-ship Atom/braswell celeron CPUs that Intel has flooded the market with BELOW THE PRODUCTION COST in order to kill the ARM CPUs”

    • ChrisG

      I think you are right – the future of Chromebooks will be brighter if ARM plays a central part in that story. And, like you, I would encourage Samsung and others to get cracking to produce the right ARM parts for the job.

      For now though, it is fair to say, for higher end Chromebooks there simply isn’t any ARM chip available that fulfills the requirements. I agree that Perf/W, i.e. energy efficiency, is at the heart of a solid Chromebook offering. But, computer users will naturally enough seek high performance when they can (and sometimes even when they shouldn’t) and that comes at a cost to power consumption. For passively cooled notebooks (I anxiously await the demise of fan cooled consumer computing devices) keeping power dissipation under 5W TDP is essential for devices with a straightforward and easily produced design. In that category, it is the (often inexplicably expensive) Intel Core M that offers the best Perf/W, today. That may change, but only when it does – ARM chips from AMD, Samsung and Qualcomm may get there soon enough – will selecting an x86 chip start to look like an unnecessary and perhaps unwise choice.

  • Is Dell doing anything this year? Can this be a Dell getting help from Samsung?

    • Robby Payne

      It is unlikely that Samsung and Dell would do anything together. However, there are some commits we are seeing that could be Dell. The CB 13 from them showed up out of nowhere last year, so we’ll see!

  • Doug

    Hi,

    I was wondering if you could connect an additional monitor to this? To run as two different screens?