PineNote: Open e-ink tablet for those interested in development

In addition to the PinePhone mobile phone and the PineBook notebook, Pine64 is now also building an open e-ink tablet: The PineNote is expected to be sold for $ 400 this year. Technically, the PineNote is similar to the Quartz 64 mini computer. The RK3566 with four Cortex-A55 cores is used as the SoC; the LPDDR4 working memory is said to be 4 GB. The PineNote also has 128 GB of eMMC flash memory.

Pine64 also installs two microphones and two loudspeakers in the e-ink device. The unspecified battery is charged via USB-C, the network is only accessible via WiFi. The PineNote’s e-ink screen has a resolution of 1404 x 1872 pixels, which corresponds to a pixel density of 227 ppi. In contrast to some other modern e-readers, it does not master color, instead it can display 16 shades of gray. A front light should provide sufficient brightness for reading, which can display the light either cool or warmer – but you have to adjust this yourself in the first version of the PineNote.

The PineNote’s e-ink display can be controlled via touch inputs, and Pine64 also sells an EMR stylus separately. If you already have a pen that complies with the Wacom EMR standard, you should be able to use it.

For developers only

The current version of PineNote is only suitable for developers clarifies the Pine64 community in their announcement. “If you want to buy one of the first PineNotes, you have to assume that you have to write software instead of notes,” explains Pine64. The pre-installed software is not yet able to create notes or display e-books.

Basically, the PineNote is designed to support Linux operating systems – due to its similarity to the Quartz 64 mini PC, not much work is required. Only the e-ink panel is probably not supported in the main branch of the Linux kernel at the start. The KDE development team is currently discussing whether a plasma surface on the PineNote would make sense.

(dahe)