For the past couple of months or so, rumors of a new Chromebook codenamed “Kevin” being in the works have emerged at a rather regular rate. Various hardware components have been mentioned in previous rumors, but up until now not many clues have popped-up in regards to who might be building the Kevin. However, according to new reports, the Chromebook in question might actually be manufactured by none other than Samsung Electronics.
Judging by previous rumors, the Chromebook Kevin will take the form of a convertible notebook, and could apparently be paired with a Wacom active stylus and digitizer. The last part is one of the reasons why the Kevin has stolen the spotlight a few times already, primarily because Chromebooks so far haven’t supported stylus input out of the factory gates. As for the story at hand, the folks at Chrome Unboxed seem to have found new evidence to suggest that the Chromebook Kevin is manufactured by Samsung. This theory has been tested by a series of commits found in the Chromium OS Repositories, which seem to be owned by two Samsung employees, namely Wonjoon Lee and Jongpin Jung. These individuals have submitted commits in the Chromium OS Repositories using “@samsung.com” e-mail addresses, and the biggest clues to suggest that Samsung is involved in the development of Kevin lie in a series of commits to crucial components and features including touchpad functions, big.LITTLE SoC voltage settings, board voltage regulation, processor clock speeds, and wireless MIMO (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) functions. It’s interesting to note that the Chromebook Kevin is expected to be powered by a Rockchip RK3399 System-on-Chip which accommodates an ARM processor with big.LITTLE architecture.
As for the idea itself that Samsung is building the Chromebook Kevin, it doesn’t sound too far-fetched considering the company’s history with Chromebooks. The first Chromebook to be truly backed by Google’s marketing campaigns was the Samsung Series 3 Chromebook which was meant “For Everyone” willing to pay $249 for the device. We could say that Samsung’s Series 3 Chromebook pushed Google’s notebook concept to the masses and under the spotlight, and now there is a possibility that Samsung will once again push the concept even further, by enriching the Chromebook experience with new features including support for styluses and Android applications. As per usual, you are advised to treat rumors accordingly until an official announcement is made, or at least until more solid evidence emerges.
