The other MediaTek Kompanio Ultra Chromebook ‘Hylia’ is a convertible

The development story around the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra (MT8196) has been one of the most exciting things we’ve been tracking in the ChromeOS space over the past year. With the ‘Rauru’ baseboard paving the way for a new class of powerful, efficient ARM-powered Chromebooks, we’ve kept a close eye on its two main offshoots: ‘Navi’ and ‘Hylia’.

A quick recap on ‘Navi’ and ‘Hylia’

As a brief refresher, my snooping in the Chromium Gerrit has pointed to ‘Navi’ being a premium clamshell Chromebook with a high likelihood of it coming from Lenovo. The evidence points to a seriously impressive device, with specs that include a beautiful 16-inch 16:10 4K OLED display, Wi-Fi 7, and a fingerprint scanner. It’s poised to be a true flagship.

Until now, we’ve had more to go on for ‘Navi’ and have believed ‘Hylia’ was being developed as another clamshell version of ‘Rauru’. For whatever reason, the specific details on ‘Hylia’ have been a bit more elusive to find thus far. However, I’ve found something new that has me excited to keep digging around to find out more about ‘Hylia’ moving forward.

A new commit shows ‘Hylia’ is a convertible

It is now clear that ‘Hylia’ is being developed as a convertible Chromebook. This is a significant differentiator from ‘Navi’ and though I still don’t know the size of ‘Hylia’, I’m excited for the prospects of what a thin, light convertible with the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra could deliver.

Of course, the mention of ‘tablet mode’ in this commit is what grabbed my eye initially. I still hold out hope that we could see one premium Chromebook tablet with the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra inside, but I don’t think ‘Hylia’ is that device right now.

I’ve found no mention of a removable keyboard and no mention of the necessary keyboard code name you get with tablet development, either. Is there a chance? Maybe, but I’d put my money on ‘Hylia’ being a thin/light convertible Chromebook in the 13″-14″ size if I was a betting man.

But there are still a ton of lingering questions to be answered, here. Are ‘Navi’ and ‘Hylia’ being built by different manufacturers? Will they both be in the more premium tier of Chromeobook Plus? Are they going to be different sizes? What sort of internals will go along with this wildly-powerful processor?

We’ll hopefully have those answers sooner than later, and having two Kompanio Ultra devices on the way is fantastic news no matter how you slice it. The future for ARM-powered flagship Chromebooks is looking brighter and more flexible than ever (don’t forget about the Snapdragon X Elite devices on the way as well) and we’ll be watching the development of both ‘Navi’ and ‘Hylia’ with even greater anticipation than before. Stay tuned!