
Pine64 launches the cheapest Linux Tablet ever priced at just $99.99 - darshansavla
https://androidrookies.com/pine64-launches-the-cheapest-linux-tablet-ever-priced-at-just-99-99/
======
founderling
I wonder why they price their products so cheap.

They seem to be totally overrun by demand. And give a terrible user experience
when you try to order from them. Friends of mine have ordered (and paid!)
Pine64 products weeks ago and get no information when they will be shipped.
When you send them an email, it either gets ignored or you get a reply by
someone who does not speak English. Telling you something like "Yes will
inform you when be shipped".

Why not charge 50% more and treat your customers like customers?

This taints the whole Pine64 brand for me. I totally want a Linux phone and a
Linux tablet. But I don't know if I should trust a brand that treats their
customers like this.

~~~
farisjarrah
This isnt really a finished product that they are comfortable selling to the
general population. I actually feel like they are doing a pretty good job of
setting customers expectations. From the order page for the pine tab I see
these disclaimers:

    
    
        The PineTab comes with UBports OS build installed. Please note that the OS build is still in a beta stage, and while most core functionality works, some elements remain a work-in-progress.
    
        Small numbers (1-3) of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect.
    
        When fulfilling the purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the PineTab at this price as a community service to PINE64 communities. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the PineTab. Thank you.
    

To me that means, this is not a "product" in the traditional sense. They're
just trying to accommodate hackers by providing more fully fleshed out
development kits in hopes that they can make a more fully fledged product in
the future.

~~~
founderling
How does the statement about dead pixels help people who ordered and paid a
phone but get no information on when it will be shipped?

Regarding general population vs hackers: Do you imply that hackers value low
price higher then others? Are hackers particularely poor? I thought hacker
often means coder which usually means higher income then the general
population.

Personally, I would totally prefer to pay 50% more and have my emails answered
and my orders shipped.

~~~
Lex-2008
I'm not that much into discussion of terms "hackers" vs "community", but maybe
you can track updates in the first post in this tread:
[https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942)

Quoting from there:

> We're under constraints that we have no control over (e.g. border being
> closed between HK and mainland China), the shipping companies and carriers
> are under many constraints (self-imposed or imposed by regulators) and the
> logistic chain as a whole - including people - is under regulatory
> constraints. In short, current situation is not business as usual. I am
> getting many PMs and emails asking about status reports - as soon as I know
> something, I post it here, there is no need to PM or email me. Thank you for
> your continued patience!

Also, somewhere I've read that their shipping team is 4 people packing about
1000 items per day. Why increased demand doesn't cause increase in shipping
team - that I don't know.

You can also connect to IRC/Telegram/Matrix channel and ask there - somebody
with more knowledge might answer you.

------
fheld
previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478454)

------
jmull
I like to see things getting cheaper, but I've got to wonder: is cost a
problem that is important to solve for Linux tablets?

If utility is limiting these kinds of devices more than price, then cutting a
few bucks from the purchase price isn't going to change things much.

Is it like lowering the toll on a bridge that doesn't go anywhere most people
want to go?

~~~
intopieces
The first step to making it a place where people want to go is making it
easier to build that place.

For the next billion users of the web/computers $100 is still a big
investment.

------
mNovak
Slightly off topic, but I'm still always shocked when I see small businesses
running iPads just to plug in a Square card reader, or run some basic form-
fill application.

~~~
lacker
You can get a refurbished iPad for $100 and a new one for $280. And you know
all your employees will be familiar with the interface. Why bother using
anything else?

~~~
asveikau
How well does iOS really work as a kiosk when your customers might interact
with it, possibly unattended? I know I've seen many iPads in such a situation
where they go on a lock screen and ask for a passcode, or you can hit Home and
go to Springboard to open some apps or change settings, or at one point I had
it pop up a prompt to update the major version of iOS and I hit "yes" and it
seemed quite busy working on that upgrade ....

I guess there is "Guided Access Mode", but I literally just learned about it
googling for this question, and it would seem a lot of people don't know about
it.

~~~
AnssiH
Some "real" payment terminals are also suspectible to customer misuse. There
have been many cases of customers issuing "refunds" of thousands of euros to
themselves when they were supposed to be inputting their PIN - easier if the
terminal is out of sight of the seller - e.g. in a car at a drive-in:

(all in Finnish)

[https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9966606](https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9966606)

[https://www.is.fi/tampereen-
seutu/art-2000006461066.html](https://www.is.fi/tampereen-
seutu/art-2000006461066.html)

[https://mikkeli.datagroup.fi/fi/asiakkaille/blogi/haikailema...](https://mikkeli.datagroup.fi/fi/asiakkaille/blogi/haikailematon-
petos-yleistyy-valvo-maksupaatteen-kayttoa)

[https://www.is.fi/digitoday/tietoturva/art-2000005178637.htm...](https://www.is.fi/digitoday/tietoturva/art-2000005178637.html)

------
hebrox
I did some actual work on an ASUS Chromebook C201P, running VS Code,
Postgresql, pgAdmin and Node.js. It was a little bit slow, but not too bad.

I kind of expected/hoped this to be better than that old Chromebook, but
reading this [https://www.cnx-software.com/2015/04/09/relative-
performance...](https://www.cnx-software.com/2015/04/09/relative-performance-
of-arm-cortex-a-32-bit-and-64-bit-cores/) it looks like it has even worse
performance (A17 vs A53)

~~~
jleahy
I still have an Acer C720, which cost $250 back in 2013. It's a lovely piece
of equipment, once you remove ChromeOS. I've taken it apart more times than I
can recall, lots of empty space inside. The only downside is 2GB of RAM, 4GB
would have been better, otherwise it's a perfect device even today (for
development and browsing the web).

I always meant to buy a couple more RAM chips and solder them down to the
motherboard (there's a couple of unpopulated pads), but never got round to it.

Sadly the wifi chip is soldered down, that's one of my only grips (RAM I get,
but typically wifi would be an m.2 slot unless you're really cheap).

So I imagine you could get a lot done with this, even with the terrible
performance. If you're just programming and using a browser you really don't
need much oomph.

~~~
maxwellg
I took my intro to databases course on a $160 (sale) Acer C670 in 2015.
Fantastic battery life, Crouton was a breeze to get working, and was my first
introduction to doing work in a unix environment. The only problem was that
the larger tests would take more than 2GB of ram, and start swapping out to
disk - so suites that took my classmates 5 minutes to run took me closer to an
hour. I got very careful at thinking over the code in my head before hitting
run.

Wonderful little system for a broke CS student, and nothing but fond memories.

------
non-entity
I suppose we can expect it to perform as well as a $99 tablet?

~~~
justwalt
Yeah, probably about as well as any of the quicker RPi clones would, which is
pretty decent for light tasks. $100 is about as much as you’d pay for one of
those plus a touchscreen anyways, so it sounds like a fair deal.

~~~
rjsw
I only have one Pine device, a Pinebook. The build quality seems good to me,
it isn't just a collection of components thrown together.

~~~
gspr
I'm so close to buying a Pinebook, and I know that everyone wants "just one
more feature", but jesus, 4 GB or RAM?! If it had at least 8 I'd buy it in a
sec. But 4 just won't cut it (thank you, modern web).

~~~
NikolaeVarius
4gb is fine if you run a lighter DE. I program go/python/c++ directly on a
Jetson Nano w/ vim and firefox and haven't had any huge issues

~~~
zozbot234
OTOH a touchscreen-enabled device is exactly where a heavier DE might make
some sense. GNOME3 is still only borderline-usable on 2GB of RAM (though you
can obviously work around this by adding swap).

~~~
brnt
Gnome 3 is since a year or so the memory-heaviest Linux DE. You may get a
better experience with another DE!

------
ndesaulniers
Pretty sure Walmart sold RCA brand Android tablets for $50.

~~~
SahAssar
In common parlance "Linux (Phone|Tablet)" does not include android because the
userspace is usually very different than what most people running linux think
as linux.

~~~
ndesaulniers
Mmm...no true Scotsman.

~~~
wiml
I propose we refer to this as the "no true Stallman" argument.

------
kn0where
Technically, Amazon Fire tablets are also Linux, and cheaper. (But the Fire
runs Linux in the outdated-Android-with-crapware sense, of course, so this is
still quite different)

~~~
hwc
Technically, all android devices run the Linux kernel.

------
chaoticmass
I bought a RCA Cambio 12.2 tablet last summer for something to play with
($220). It has decent specs (Celeron N4000, 64GB storage, 12" display at
1920x1200) except for the 2GB RAM handicaps it greatly for Windows 10 usage. I
put Debian on it and I've been working on getting drivers for everything. If I
can get all the drivers I need, it'll be a pretty sweet little tablet.

------
VikingCoder
$84.95 RCA Voyager Pro 7 16GB Tablet with Keyboard Case Android 6.0
(Marshmallow) in Purple [1].

I've seen other RCA Voyagers going for $50 or less, even at Walmart.

* 7.0" touchscreen

* 1.3GHz Quad-Core processor

* 16GB of storage memory

* Google Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS

* Webcam, WiFi and Bluetooth

And then install Termux [2], which is a nifty Linux that runs on Android.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/RCA-Voyager-Keyboard-Marshmallow-
RCT6...](https://www.amazon.com/RCA-Voyager-Keyboard-Marshmallow-
RCT6873W42KC/dp/B015NO9Z1C/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/140-9724166-9102806?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B015NO9Z1C&pd_rd_r=89248549-5c6e-416e-b502-623f62f6de4f&pd_rd_w=zNiWO&pd_rd_wg=KzGbw&pf_rd_p=4e3f7fc3-00c8-46a6-a4db-8457e6319578&pf_rd_r=FZEFV53E47KCNYZSZR3B&psc=1&refRID=FZEFV53E47KCNYZSZR3B)

[2] [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

~~~
nightowl_games
These things were hell to support as an Android game dev. Lots of GPU driver
bugs. Horrible performance.

------
shorts_theory
Excellent. This could be a great device as a Qt PoS or inventory management
system.

~~~
ciupicri
Do you have any specific software in mind?

~~~
shorts_theory
I was working on a PyQt inventory management system for our robotics club
([https://github.com/arc-bphc/sims-gui](https://github.com/arc-bphc/sims-gui))
back in undergrad. We weren't able to finish this project, but our plan was to
have a Raspberry Pi 3 with Ubuntu MATE connected to a 7" touchscreen for
running the inventory management software. This tablet would have made life
much easier for us.

------
katmannthree
Anybody here remember the HP Touchpad firesale where HP liquidated their stock
of cancelled not-quite-iPad-competitors for $99.99 and people went nuts for
them?

It's weird how that felt like a great deal and yet this one is expensive
enough to make me question if I could get anything close to that much value
out of it. The HP firesale was back in the days where a decent tablet cost
around $500 and it was a screaming deal. Now people practically give tablets
away, I've seen Amazon's Fire tablets sell for $39 brand new.

~~~
dangus
It was definitely a high end tablet at the time.

Maybe it also reflected less of a worry about losing software support at that
time. If Apple told us that the iPad was now discontinued and you could get an
iPad Pro for $99, I wonder how many people would jump on it. If the software
is dead the device is a brick. That concept wasn’t really on people’s minds as
much in the PC days.

In retrospect it’s unbelievable that HP had the lack of foresight to abandon
webOS and Palm devices. Maybe there’s a lot of business reasons why it would
have never worked but I remember Palm and HP TouchPad devices being very
popular in the early consumer smartphone days, and the software was
competitive. If it wasn’t good we wouldn’t see it all over smart TVs today.

~~~
zozbot234
The HP webpad has pretty good software support even today, albeit obviously
unofficial and not from HP. People are even looking into running pmOS on it;
it's just hard because it's not a standard device in any sense, so it comes
with its own booting, flashing etc. workflows.

------
scared2
This might be a Linux tablet but definitely not cheapest tablet.

------
sosborn
I think we are all just waiting for ETA Prime to get a hold of one to see what
emulators we can run on it.

------
throwaway777555
No USB 3 ports? Only USB 2? That's a little disappointing. Aside from that,
this looks pretty cool. I haven't been huge into using tablets, but mostly
because I don't like the locked down ecosystems of iOS and Android. This might
change my mind about them.

------
fit2rule
I look at my old AI Touchbook with some nostalgia.

Seems like this PineTablet, at $US99, may just end up delivering on the
promise.

Lets see.

------
VectorLock
Hows the hackability on this? I'd love a $100 tablet with all the Raspberry
Pi-like pins exposed.

------
Causality1
I'd be interested in this if it weren't for the screen resolution. I've long
since found that 150ppi is the dividing line for me with tablets where I can't
ignore the pixel grid anymore.

~~~
sukilot
Gotta walk before run. If you help this version succeed, the hipdi version
will likely be developed sooner.

------
api
I think there might eventually be a market for a high-end ARM64 Linux laptop
or convertible with excellent build quality, long battery life, lots of cores
and RAM, etc.

~~~
TomMarius
I hope we will see RISC-V devices

------
Pet_Ant
Now waiting for one of these with an eInk screen...

------
transfire
Give me 1080p (or more) and I'll pay over $200. 720p is just too constrained.

------
person_of_color
I feel this is going to be a lag monster.

~~~
perlpimp
it is sort of, but not terrible for 99$ device with a keyboard.

[https://youtu.be/l53h_uQ41Ao?t=274](https://youtu.be/l53h_uQ41Ao?t=274)

~~~
inetsee
The last time I looked it was $99 for the tablet, plus $20 if you wanted to
add the keyboard. Has that changed?

~~~
tpxl
No, it is 99$ for the tablet and 20$ for the keyboard.

------
rydre
[deleted]

~~~
ArgyleSound
Ubuntu looks... fine? In my experience Gnome 3 has been a relatively polished
and coherent user experience, perhaps more so in some ways than Windows.

------
haunter
You get what you pay for

~~~
scottydelta
Even the product photograph[1] on the website looks like a picture of a second
hand laptop from a decade ago on Craigslist.

[1] [https://www.pine64.org/wp-
content/uploads/2020/05/pinetab_KB...](https://www.pine64.org/wp-
content/uploads/2020/05/pinetab_KB_P64_UT_2.png)

------
symlinkk
I hate this “race to the bottom” behavior that a lot of Linux OEMs are doing.
We need a flagship Linux product, not cheap throwaway products that will
tarnish its reputation. This is Android all over again.

~~~
utopcell
The Developer Edition XPS 13 is already a flagship Linux product.

~~~
Shared404
Plus Lenovo's deal with Fedora.

