Pine64 is a company that produces inexpensive single-board computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones designed to run open source software, usually aimed at developers and open source enthusiasts.
In response to the current RAM shortage, the company has paused production of some devices, including the PinePhone, PineNote, and PineTab2. But the company is also introducing a new device: The PineTime Pro smartwatch.
Left: PineTime / Right: PineTime Pro (prototype)
The announcement comes nearly seven years after the company unveiled the original PineTime and nearly five years after the company began selling it for $27.
While Pine64 hasn’t revealed a price, release date, or detailed specs for the new model yet, it’s expected to bring several improvements including:
AMOLED displayGPS supportAdditional sensors (including blood oxygen)Digital Crown with an extra button
Pine64 says the PineTime Pro will have “a custom chip,” but it’s unclear which system-on-a-chip the new watch will use.
Still, it sounds like the new model should bring some nice usability and quality of life improvements.
The original PineTime has a 1.3 inch, 240 x 240 pixel IPS capacitive touchscreen display with support for 65 thousand colors and a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52832 chip with an 64 MHz ARM Cortex-M4 CPU and support for Bluetooth 5.4 LE. The watch has 64KB of RAM, 512KB of flash storage, 4MB of SPI NOR storage, an accelerometer, heart rate sensor, vibration motor, and 170-180 mAh LiPo battery. It’s rated IP67 for water resistance.
So Pine64’s new model could have a more vivid screen that offers deeper blacks (and saves power when displaying black backgrounds), support for navigation without a phone, more health tracking features, and new ways to navigate, among other things.
More details should be revealed closer to launch.