Pine64 is a company which develops hardware aimed at open source software enthusiasts and then encourages independent developers to create the software that will run on it. So far that approach has generated results with a series of affordable laptops, smartphones, and a tablet.

The company’s most recent product is a $399 E Ink tablet called the PineNote. It recently went on sale for $399, but Pine64 cautions that it’s currently only appropriate for developers and early adopters because software is still very much a work in progress. But that work is progressing.

PineNote with KDE Plasma Desktop (via Pine64 and the KDE dev team)

Pine64 community manager Lukasz Erecinski highlights some recent progress in the company’s latest monthly update blog post. At this point all of the tablet’s hardware works with open source Linux software including the E Ink display, capacitive touch panel, Wacom digitizer, WiFi, Bluetooth, and audio.

Meanwhile, developers of several GNU/Linux distributions and user interfaces have begun porting their software to run on this E Ink tablet with a grayscale display, a slow screen refresh rate, and a Rockchip RK3566 processor. Some things aren’t working yet – including hardware-accelerated graphics, which means the user interface is sluggish. But things have come a long way since Pine64 began shipping the first units to developers a few months ago.

Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.

Pine64 February 2022 Update [Pine64]

Software development for the upcoming PineNote E Ink tablet continues. Most hardware is now supported in Linux, a grayscale Plasma Mobile theme is in the works, and there’s initial support for postmarketOS with the Phosh and SXMO user interfaces.

Sony Just Reinvented Wireless Earbuds [Gizmodo]

Sony’s LinkBuds true wireless earbuds are the opposite of noise-cancelling: they’re designed to be wearable all day, allowing you to hear people and sounds around you without removing them. You can also control them by tapping nearby without touching.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review shows Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 GPU is faster than Exynos 2200 [TechPowerUp]

Samsung’s Exynos 2200 processor with AMD RDNA 2 graphics appears to offer only a modest GPU performance boost over the previous-gen chip… and the same phone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip trounces them both according to a recent review. The video review (which you can watch below) is in Turkish, which is why I’m linking to TechPowerUp’s summary.

Intel to Acquire Tower Semiconductor [Intel]

Intel is acquiring Tower Semicondicutor for $5.4 billion to help shore up its foundry services (Intel manufactures chips for other companies). Tower specializes in things like RF, power, industrial sensors, and silicon-germanium. The move follows Intel’s recent $1 billion investment in third-party chip development including major contributions to organizations working on RISC-V architecture, also seen as an effort to shore up demand for Intel’s foundry services. 

Shield TV gets 9.0.1 update to fix Android 11 issues including Plex servers, storage permissions [9to5Google]

NVIDIA begins rolling out software version 9.0.1 for the Shield TV, bringing fixes for Plex media servers and other apps that use external storage which had been broken by the update to Android 11.

Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook and follow @LinuxSmartphone on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on open source mobile phones.

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