Why ‘Xol’ could become the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus

I’m going to level with you on something. Three days ago when I uncovered ‘Xol’ – a new Chromebook in the works that will come with some sort of Assistant key on the keyboard – I also noticed a couple emails associated with some of the changes happening for this device in the Chromium Gerrit. I held that back to share later as I knew the Assistant key being included on the keyboard was the highlight of the discovery, and I meant to add in this fact the next day.

As you might know by now, I got caught up in other things and didn’t circle back to share that nugget of info with you. Yesterday, however, as 9to5 Google picked up the story on ‘Xol’, they did include the fact that this device definitely has ties to Samsung, and I immediately kicked myself for forgetting to get back to this part of the ‘Xol’ narrative. Either way, it’s out there now, and I have a few thoughts.

First up, if you’re a regular tracker of upcoming Chromebooks, the names SH Kim and Jongpil Jung should be familiar. They both tend to show up when Samsung is in the mix, and with ‘Xol’, they are already on a few of the commits. With both of these names already appearing, we can feel quite confident that ‘Xol’ is going to be a Samsung-built Chromebook. The same was true with ‘Pirrha’, but we have a bit of inside info on that one, and it turns out that device is a bit of a red herring. Still, we were correct there, as well, that Jongpil Jung and SH Kim’s involvement pointed to Samsung.

Samsung and an Assistant key?

Alright, so Samsung is behind ‘Xol’. Exciting, sure, but what really makes this interesting is the fact that we simply don’t have Chromebooks with Assistant keys that aren’t made by Google. So far, that just hasn’t been a thing, so to see the Assistant key being tied to a Samsung device is very interesting. As we’ve said many times before, Google seems to truly be out of the first party Chromebook game, so if they are wanting to do something a bit extra, they need a partner.

And Samsung makes sense. In the Chromebook space, they’ve been moving in the wrong direction for too long since the debut of the Galaxy Chromebook in 2020. It’s high time they get back in the game and deliver a great overall Chromebook once again. And with their latest Windows hardware, it is clear that they are very much up to the task.

With Google and Samsung’s close partnership in the Android space of late, a close connection for a top-of-the-line Chromebook could be very interesting. Go to a Best Buy store and pick up the latest Galaxy Book Pro and tell me you wouldn’t love to have one of those bad boys as a Chromebook. I know I would! And that’s the sort of device I’m assuming is on the way as 9to5 Google did find references to this being a clamshell only device at this point.

It’s still early in all of this, but with ‘Xol’ being based on ‘Brya’, the development cycle won’t have to be terribly long. This is a well-known, fully-developed baseboard that has multiple devices already launched and in the wild for quite some time. Still, it may be Q3 or Q4 before we actually see anything come of this entire project if I’m being realistic. Even so, I’m hoping we at least hear something in the way of official news by the summer. We’ll keep searching until we do, and in the meantime, I’m placing my bets on the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus as the branding we should see.