Take this with a cup of salt flakes, but this may be Nocturne, a new Google tablet designed like the Surface Pro, with a hardware magnetic connector that quickly attaches it to compatible keyboards.
The leak comes to us by way of About Chromebooks.
Previous Pixelbook 2018 rumors pointed at two different models coming in Google’s October 9 event, codenamed Atlas and Nocturne.
The former would in theory become a revised Google slim notebook, the Pixelbook 2. The latter may be what you can see in these images: a detachable computer that can act as a tablet or a laptop.
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Now, the keyboard you can see here is not made by Google. Its name is “Wallaby” and it is made by a third-party keyboard company called Brydge, which currently makes keyboards for the Apple iPad. According to the blog Aboutchromebooks, Brydge is planning to introduce two new keyboards specifically for Chrome OS tablets.
The same blog claims it found these photos buried somewhere in the company’s web site, and points out that the tablet part is certainly not an iPad. In fact, it’s nothing we have seen before.
First, it’s running Chrome OS. Second, you can see what it looks like a fingerprint reader on the top left corner from this angle.
This looks in exactly the same position as a leaked graphic, which shows how to enroll in fingerprint identification in Chrome OS:
The illustration was discovered deep inside Chrome OS by blog Chrome Unboxed. The drawing looks just like this tablet, with the same fingerprint reader.
Previously, a short video surfaced on the web purporting to show either Atlas or Nocturne. But we can’t see enough of the tablet part to tell if this may be the same device or not.
As you might notice, the keyboard in the video has rounded keys, unlike the Wallaby keyboard. Perhaps this is Google’s own keyboard. The Mountain View company may choose to sell Nocturne on its own alongside an optional keyboard and allow users to buy others from third parties (like Apple does with the iPad Pro).
We will have to wait and see if any of this is true at Google’s October 9 event.
