Pinebook arrived!

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Yippie! My brand new Pinebook 11,6″ arrived today!

Very nice device. I am pretty impressed by the quality compared to the very low price of just US$89 (plus US$37 shipping plus German VAT and expenses of 36,44€ 🙁

The overall impression is pretty cool. It came with Android 6.1 pre-installed though I ordered it with Linux, i.e. a Linux flavor with Mate desktop. I will play a little with Android before I re-install one of the Linux distros.

So far the, as I said, I am pretty impressed. The screen quality is pretty good for a TN TFT (not an IPS panel). The keyboard is nice though for me the space key sits a little too far to the right. The touchpad is also OK, not the best I ever had but also not the worst.

The device gets pretty warm in the upper left corner when attached to AC. This is where the PCB with all the active components is located. I will check the temperature without AC and normal light CPU load. Temperature also mean energy consumption which directly correlates to battery lifetime. Apropos AC, the only way to charge it is by using a separate +5V 3A AC adapter. A pity that they did not include a (extra) USB client as microUSB with charging capability. Oh well, next version maybe 🙂

Apropos battery: The device goes into suspend when the lid is closed, nice! But it does not wake up when opening it. Oh well… And it takes quite some time to go to sleep and to wake up, around 3-4 seconds for going to sleep and ~2 seconds to wake up. I hope this can be improved.

What I like most about this device is that it is open as in open source! You can download and explore all technical details including the schematics of the boards. This is great for hackers! and will be great for users since they will benefit from better software that hackers are able to build because they have access to all information.