Pine64 launches the cheapest Linux Tablet ever priced at just $99.99

    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.

On price:

By releasing things as cheaply as they can within reason, this vastly broadens who can get one. Given that they depend on the community to create most if not all of the software, this means that software support gets there much earlier than it would otherwise; compare the progress on the Librem handset to the PinePhone: one took three years, has gone over the predicted timeframe multiple times, and still isn't quite right (or released), while Pine64's is actually surprisingly decent, and got there much faster.

On 'customer' experience:

Every time I've ordered from them they've been perfectly responsive and have gotten things shipped on a reasonable time frame. They're based in China and, if you weren't aware, there's kind of a big event happening over there that's interrupted their everything. They're not Apple and it'd be worse if they were trying to be; they aren't treating their customers badly, they're treating their workers well; chill out.

I have one of their boards and can only say I had a good experience buying from them. I think compared to some of the alternatives in the price range (ie., random, no-name eBay crap), their documentation and forums is very good.

The complete opposite of Librem, who do the same thing but charges $2000 for a laptop that barely boots without hacking libreboot every week and then proceed to use that money in marketing for their linux mobile phone which will be in the same sorry state and sold for the same high price and empty promises.

For anyone who wants a a decent tablet (Android 5 though) on 10", I suggest the Amazon Fire HD (7th gen is fine), you can get a used for for £30-£50, then "hack it" to remove the Amazon crap/bloatware (plenty of sites with instructions out there) and use that. I have set up multiple friends like that. They buy it, meet for a coffee, I de-crap it for them in 20mins and they end up with a nice 10" android tablet to read and watch Netflix.

(Not advertising or affiliated with Amazon)(I think Bezos should give more to his staff and less to his pocket) ;)

When I got the laptop I was expecting a cheap plastic build but got an aluminium sturdy frame. Best laptop purchase I ever had, this comment is actually being written from my new pinebook pro.

I m sorry you feel you are not treated like a customer. Given the company's size they are really doing wonders.

Frankly, it seems like this isn't the device for you. I agree, you should probably wait. But words like "taint the brand" seem incredibly strong to me.

These devices are for developers and tinkerers, not the general population. The goal is to get these devices into as many hands as possible, hitting a price point as low as possible. This allows for more people to get access to the hardware and start tinkering, helping to build out the (woefully lacking, at this time) software ecosystem.

To be honest, I feel like they have done a really good job of setting expectations around this, so I'm not terribly sympathetic to this class of complaint. I ordered a PinePhone and am patiently waiting for it to ship. I'm glad it's so cheap! It's not going to be a device to replace my primary phone (yet), it's a project to tinker with. As such I don't want to spend much more money.

They are very transparent about the delays in shipping. You can find the most up to date information in a sticky post on their forum[1].

> This taints the whole Pine64 brand for me.

That's an extremely charged response, you definitely should check the forum post to get some perspective. In short, there were QA issues with the first batch of Pinebook Pro and PinePhone orders, they are running the remaining unshipped units through a second round of testing before shipping, and the combination of COVID-19 and China/Hong Kong border issues have further delayed shipping.

[1] https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942

Adjusting pricing may be better for them especially if demand is that high.

Honestly, I suspect this experience is just not for you, man. It's like when we funded the glowing plant on Kickstarter, or the smart mattress topper that became Luna and then Eight, or funded the development of neovim. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. These are people experienced at doing a thing but not all the things around the thing. There's going to be drop-offs.

I really wish there were a way to just say "If you have normative expectations, go elsewhere". I really want to be able to participate in this specific subsector of the economy without the general-consumer folks increasing costs because I'm willing to accept lots of cut corners on beta products and they want all the trappings of working with folks.

As an example, one of the things I bought they took two weeks to respond to me (it was a combination GPS/Glonass/Galileo antenna for cheap). That's okay for me. It took months to arrive with many delays every few months. That's also okay for me. I don't want them to hire more folks to ensure they can respond to everyone. I don't want them to hire more folks so they can manage the customs hassle. I want them to be able to validate the product itself because I want more of that product.

I think where Pine64 failed to deliver is that they overpromised on when they could deliver the product. I received mine very late and I couldn't boot the OS and support wasn't helpful.

Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi 3 with 64bit support was announced after Pine64 and delivered before the Pine64 without hiccups.

Pine64 could have improved but I woule rather stick with something like a Raspberry Pi where there is a better level of support (from my experience).

If pine doesn't want price to be a barrier to purchasing their products (which is an admirable position), and they don't have the resources to serve all the orders they're getting, they should throw up some other barriers in the purchasing process to handle the demand. instead of selling direct, do bulk buys through linux user groups or something like that.

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

I just use mine for fun/learning. Have it flashed w/ Libreboot and running PrawnOS (Debian / Linux-libre based) which keeps seeing a nice amount of improvements. https://github.com/SolidHal/PrawnOS

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.

Upd: if it's too slow for you, consider this: http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfe...

that said size of the screen is actually a big factor in price, also you need more powerful processor to push pixels on that screen and bigger battery for power draw. all those costs add up. plus they maybe following razer blade model.

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.

Agreed -- there's a big subsidy from Amazon there. But LCD screens and much of the same parts as computers+phones have had big economic forces driving the prices down.

https://youtu.be/l53h_uQ41Ao?t=274

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