The first MediaTek MT8189 tablet ‘Padme’ will feature a large 12.1-inch QHD+ screen

The story of the upcoming MediaTek MT8189-powered Chromebooks just keeps getting more interesting. We recently uncovered that the ‘Jedi’ baseboard and its first offshoot, ‘Padme’, are being developed specifically for a new generation of Chromebook tablets. The prospect of a new, powerful ARM-based tablet has been exciting enough on its own.

Now, thanks to some new commits in the Chromium Gerrit and messages on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, we have our first concrete hardware specification for ‘Padme’: its screen size and resolution. And it’s a larger display than we expected for sure.

12.1-inch QHD+ display

The new code changes add support for a specific display panel (the Tianma TL121BVMS07_00C) to the ‘Jedi’ baseboard that ‘Padme’ is built on. Digging into the details (here and here) of this panel found on LKML.org, we can confirm the key specs for ‘Padme’s screen:

• Size: 12.1 inches
• Resolution: QHD+ 2560×1600
• Aspect Ratio: 16:10

With a 12.1-inch screen, ‘Padme’ is a significant step up in size from some of the most popular Chromebook tablets of the past – like the excellent Lenovo Chromebook Duet 11″.

This larger, higher-resolution screen clearly positions ‘Padme’ not as a small, secondary content consumption device, but as a more premium, productivity-focused tablet that can be a true laptop replacement. A powerful and efficient processor like the MediaTek MT8189 deserves a large, high-resolution screen to go with it, and it looks like that’s exactly what we’re going to get.

The picture of ‘Padme’ is starting to become at least a tad clearer, but there are far more questions to be answered for sure. As always, we’ll continue tracking its development and will report back as soon as more hardware details emerge.