Chinese tablet maker Chuwi has revealed a new tablet that can dual boot Windows and Android.

The company posted a video of the 8 inch tablet doing just that on Youku. First it’s shown running Windows 8.1… then the user restarts the tablet and it launches Android 4.4 KitKat.

chuwi vi8 dual

Announcing the tablet on social network Weibo, Chuwi didn’t provide many details about the device. But if this is the same Chuwi Vi8 tablet the company first teased a few months ago, it has an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and an Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core Bay Trail processor.

That kind of hardware should be able to run either Android or Windows. But most companies that sell tablets in the West choose to install either one operating system or the other.

During the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show Asus introduced 2-in-1 tablet/notebook hybrid called the Transformer Book Duet that could run Android and Windows, and both Intel and AMD were pushing their own Dual OS platforms in hopes of getting device makers to offer Android/Windows hybird tablets.

All of those projects fizzled out, possibly due to pressure from Google and Microsoft. Reports suggested neither software maker liked the idea of its operating system running on dual OS hardware.

chuwi vi8 dual boot

Chinese companies that produce devices for sale in China have a habit of doing things their own way though, so while it’s certainly possible that Chuwi is working with the blessing of Google and Microsoft, it’s also possible that the company simply doesn’t care what either OS maker thinks.

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if the dual-boot Chuwi Vi8 is available for purchase outside of China anytime soon, how much it will cost, and whether anybody actually wants a tablet that runs two operating systems… but which requires you to reboot to switch between them.

via Mike Cane and AndroidPC.es

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9 replies on “Chuwi Vi8 dual-boot tablet runs Android, Windows”

  1. It’s the same way to switch the system like ONDA V919 3G Air I think, just need one button, but maybe it means that there are two running systems and share the RAM together, the performance of device will be influenced, right? TECLAST dual boot tabelt does well in this aspect, so i have a hesitation about the choice, ONDA V919 3G Air https://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v919-air-dual-boot-tablet-pc-64gb.html or this one https://www.tinydeal.com/teclast-x98-air-3g-97-android-44-win81-z3736f-tablet-phone-p-141878.html, anyone can give some advices?

    1. both very nice, I prefer Teclast cause I had another teclast before worked perfect!

    2. I heard that Onda batteries are complete and utter rubbish, so get the Teclast

  2. dual booting android isn’t a big problem, did it on my old mediacenter-pc by writing 2-3 lines of config for grub
    but having 2 operating systems on 32GB (even worse when both probably wont use the same partition for userdata) is just insane
    so there are probably ~20GB gone for OS and you can have about 6GB for user-data in each OS. Have fun installing software on that!

  3. Looking at all the offerings from Chuwi, all I have to say to Chuwi, is that…
    IT PUTS THE HDMI PORT ON ITS TABLETS, OR ELSE IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN!

    1. Sounds promising, and is lighter than another version I’ve seen. But I wonder how well that Bay Trail GPU will handle a high res display?

  4. It is such a waste that my Dell tablet can’t do the same. Instead I have to use have hobbled software solutions that don’t really get the job done. For example, I have yet to find an Android emulator that will properly connect my chromecast to Android streaming apps.

    Both MS and Google are ceding a potential competitive advantage they could have over iOS.

Comments are closed.