HP is Testing a Chromebook With USB C and 16GB RAM

Remember this news about HP planning to bring VR to Chromebooks? Okay, and what about the recent rumors of a possible Pixel candidate named Chell? We have some new piece of code reviews that confirms that this is an HP made Chromebook.

Update: The VR mentioned in Chromium code is more likely to be Voltage Regulator than Virtual Reality. Sorry for the confusion.!

My only experience with VR so far is Google Cardboard (which was awesome!) but I am unsure about how VR will be on a laptop or a desktop. Anyways, here is the small piece of commit log that I have for you today:

chell: Add VR config settings Use the Kunimitsu settings as baseline, except Psi4 Enable set to 0 due to a known issue (not able to hit S0ix) on glados. The VR settings will then need to be updated per the board VR design. BRANCH=none BUG=chrome-os-partner:48466 TEST=Build and booted chell

We have already seen some details about Chell. This is one of the Chromebook boards that the Google team is currently working on. What makes this board interesting is the 16GB RAM that it packs and the skylake processor, backlit keyboard and the cool light bar from Google designed Chromebooks. These details makes us call this board a possible Pixel candidate.

However, this discussion on the Chromium developer forum confirms that this is an HP made Chromebook.

Patch Set 1: Verified+1

Following HP Spec, it must populate manufacturer name in SMBIOS  
Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard.

We rarely get details from the Chromium code or forums that confirm the manufacturers of Chromebook boards before they are released. This time however we are lucky.

There is more. We see mentions of VR support on “glados” (which could be another board) and “skylake” processors.

We are only weeks away from Google IO 2016. Hopefully we will see more leaks in the near future and things will have more clarity then. Well, it is always better to learn about something through leaks than watching an executive nicely present them on stage right? (Well, I am sure those who work hard to make such unveilings happen will disagree!) For now, look out for more leaks as we wait for IO!

Question. Do you think Google will announce VR support for Chrome OS during IO along with a new family of VR ready Chromebooks?

Thank you Greg Dubo and Jacob Gwiazdzinski.