Samsung has been deeply involved in Chromebook manufacturing since the inception of Chrome OS. Their 5 Series Chromebooks were among the first Chrome OS devices available on the market and their flimsy but affordable 3 Series Chromebook is responsible for my initial interest in Chromebooks to begin with. Remember the For everyone advertising campaigns? If not, that’s fine. You just need to know that Samsung has been a Chromebook maker for as long as Chromebook makers have been, so it’s no wonder seeing them be the first to bring something to the ecosystem.
In fact, Samsung was the first to actually introduce the right stylus holder into a Chromebook, the first to build an affordable Chromebook in Series 3, the first to make a fledgling (at that time) Chromebook convertible tablet in Chrome OS mode. on the Samsung Chromebook Plus, the first to use an ARM chip in a Chromebook, and the first to launch with a 4K AMOLED display on the Galaxy Chromebook that arrived earlier this year. There are many news and advances of a company that does not focus much on overwhelming the competition with variety in this space. Instead, innovation in Chromebooks is what Samsung is looking for.
A little bit about QLED screens
In that spirit, It seems that Samsung is also working to bring its latest display technology to Chrome OS. While the standout feature of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook is clearly the brilliant 4K AMOLED display it handles, this type of display technology is not the latest version from Samsung. Instead, Samsung’s favorite display technology right now is QLED, which was first introduced at CES 2019 for use on TVs. While not as impactful and contrasting as AMOLED panels, QLED has the ability to be much brighter and has better HDR support across the board. Furthermore, QLED is much less expensive to produce than OLED panels and can be produced on much larger televisions at a much lower price than OLED.
While QLED is still basically a good old LCD screen and in many ways inferior to OLED, it is a big step up from the standard backlit LCD screens we generally see on laptops. In addition to the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, all Chromebooks use some form of LED backlight on their LCD screen. Most televisions you see also use LCDs, and until just a couple of years ago, most phones do too. OLED is expensive to produce. Sure, it’s better on most things than other types of displays (you can read a very deep dive on OLED vs. QLED here), but pay for it. Right now, if you search for an 80+ inch OLED TV at Best Buy, you will find prices between $ 19K and $ 30K. However, for similar-sized QLED TVs, that price range drops sharply to $ 3K – $ 4K. Sure, QLED might not be as comprehensive as OLED, but I can tell you that it is not worth 10 times more in the registration for the update.
QLED coming soon to a Samsung Chromebook
Now that you know a little bit more about QLED and it’s standing as a current display technology, What’s important is that it’s on the way in Samsung’s latest Chromebook effort: ‘Nightfury’. We’ve talked a bit about ‘Nightfury’ before, but what we still have to understand is exactly what Samsung is doing with it. If you read that previous February post, ‘Nightfury’ is clearly a Samsung device and based on the same 10th generation Comet Lake ‘Hatch’ board as the existing Galaxy Chromebook. When it was added in February, it was a real head scratch since Samsung had impressed us with the Galaxy Chromebook at CES 2020. ->
However, this compromise that we just found today gives us what could be a little more understanding about this new device. If you look at the variant.c inside, you will see this portion:
const char *mainboard_vbt_filename(void)
{
uint32_t sku_id = google_chromeec_get_board_sku();
if (sku_id == 2)
return "vbt-nightfury-qled.bin";
else
return "vbt.bin";
}Pay special attention to sku_id == 2 since it points to a variation of this next device that will come with a QLED screen. We’ve been seeing updates on the display panel with ‘Nightfury’ but we haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what was being changed. Thanks to this file, it is clear that a variant of ‘Nightfury’ is definitely being tested with a QLED panel.
While we’re still trying to discern what that means for Samsung in this space, one thing seems obvious: This new Samsung Chromebook will still have one of the best displays on any Chromebook, but it will have You will clearly use it as a savings measure on the AMOLED display currently sold on the Galaxy Chromebook. While I can’t say for sure, this looks like a move towards something like a new Samsung Chromebook Plus. We saw Plus v2 debut in late 2018, so the fall release of a new version would make perfect sense.
What would not make sense is that Samsung presents a model that is very similar to its existing Chromebook Galaxy with a lower price. As we saw in the examples at the beginning of this post, Samsung likes to push the envelope, not clutter the market. I don’t think ‘Nightfury’ directly competes with the Galaxy Chromebook, but it could definitely position itself as Samsung’s mid-tier device for 2020 and, with a fantastic QLED panel inside, it will probably sell pretty well. Obviously, we continue to unearth details about ‘Nightfury’ and as we discover more, we will report it immediately. Make sure you are subscribed below so you don’t miss out.
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