It’s been a while since any company has released a Windows tablet with an ARM-based processor. But according to benchmark results that showed up at the GFXBench website, it looks like there could be a new ARM-based Windows tablet on the way.
The tablet is said to feature a high-resolution display, a speedy Qualcomm processor, and Windows software.
That’s led some folks to speculate that this could be a successor to the Nokia Lumia 2520 tablet or Microsoft’s Surface RT.
Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10 operating system is designed to run on a wide range of devices including smartphones and tablets with small screens and ARM processors and devices with very, very big screens like the 84 inch Microsoft Surface Hub.
The company has said existing tablets that run Windows RT will not be update to run Windows 10. But they will receive some Windows 10 features through an upcoming software update.
But it’s entirely possible that Microsoft or another PC maker could be working on a new ARM-based tablet that will run Windows 10. And that might be what’s showing up at GFXBench.
The tablet in question is said to have a 10.1 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor with Adreno 420 graphics, and 64GB of storage.
via GSM Arena and Nokia Power User
It seems interesting that it says 10.1″. I would be interested in seeing a 10.1″ Windows ARM tablet. Microsoft has stated that devices less than 8″ would not have the desktop while devices 8″ and up will have the desktop. They didn’t say anything regarding ARM vs x86 so it’s not clear if the restriction is based on chip or size or both.
Will a 10.1″ Windows ARM tablet end up having a desktop like Windows RT? Seems unlikely seeing as how they said the Surface RT/2 won’t be getting Windows 10.
No! I paid $600 for a surface rt when it first came out and I was just blown off by Microsoft! A few months later they slash the price, they never got developers to develop apps for it. I sold it on eBay and got me an asus t100,that cracked. Then bought a dell venue 11 pro off eBay, I really liked it but I just started having multiple Bsods and I think something is wrong with ram or ssd….
I have to buy a MacBook pro for college anyways, I guess this is good bye to windows on tablets for me…
why do you need a macbook for college? Just buy a decent laptop (Dell XPS 13, Lenovo Yoga) or a Surface Pro 3 and you are fine. All of these are cheaper than the MacBook, run full Windows and are absolutely thin, gorgeous & light.
There are 3 laptops to choose from,i have to buy from the list…. There’s a dell, an hp, and the Mac.
ah, wow…and what model of the dell and hp? (if it’s the xps,I’d favor that one…). I have it since 3 years and it’s the best device I ever had
Hp zbook 14
Dell latitude 7440
I’ve never heard of those before,I have a MacBook pro already and it has been more reliable than any other device I’ve owned
Gee, and me without my 10 foot pole. Odds are if this actually gets released it will arrive with a thud. Windows and ARM haven’t had the best relationship. Who would buy this, Windows RT users who want to upgrade? Full Windows tablets (intel based) are relatively cheap these days. Why would you buy a crippled product for the same or more money?
For mobile devices, specifically phones, phablets and small tablets that are 7″ or smaller then it doesn’t matter because they will all be using the mobile Windows 10 regardless of whether it’s ARM or Intel SoC being used…
Keep in mind that Intel does make phone SoCs too that are only meant to run a mobile OS like Android and don’t support running full Windows…
Only the Tablet SoCs on up support running full Windows and going forward OEMs are presently only planning to put them into 8″ and larger devices, as it has been deemed that the desktop isn’t very useful on anything smaller and it presently costs too much to push the limits by shoving a more powerful SoC into a smaller device…
So, it depends on which size device you’d be using as to whether it gets the mobile or full desktop Windows 10…
RT devices will largely be not upgradeable because the mobile Windows 10 does not support even a limited desktop and that means if they upgraded a RT device then the user would lose the desktop and their copy of MS Office Home & Student 2013…
Mind, MS has been steadily phasing out that edition anyway, and instead offers a free year of Office 365 instead for most new devices… While Office 2016 won’t be released until at least a few months after Windows 10 and they may not offer a free version of that either…
Leaving no real alternative for existing RT owners… So RT is basically being left out of the Windows 10 upgrade path and instead will just get some custom updates that will introduce some Windows 10 features but otherwise keep RT devices as they are…
Whether mobile Windows 10 will suck or not will depend on a number of factors, existing WP users will likely be able to adapt quickly but going forward it depends on things like whether Universal Apps take off or not… along with whether MS can get a larger share of the mobile market than they presently do…
Developers, at least, will be able to target more than just mobile devices now, with Universal apps able to be run on virtually any MS device… Even the desktop, as Metro apps can be run Windowed now and no longer need to be full screen all the time… So the app can adapt to the device it is being run on…
But whether MS can make the ecosystem attractive enough to attract developers and start getting good apps made remains to be seen… but at least, unlike RT, there’s no limited desktop that no 3rd parties could add apps for to worry about anymore and if MS makes it open enough for 3rd party browsers to be made then a much wider range of apps could be developed than can be right now with W8…
This ought to be interesting. I don’t plan to buy anything of the short, but I’m curious how they imagine their future in the ARM world. Also, with such hardware they should totally include an x86 virtual PC for their ARM OS.
The ARM world for MS isn’t limited to just tablets… Remember, they’re also getting into IoT devices and besides tablets they are already in phones and the mobile Windows 10 replaces the Windows Phone OS and not just RT…
Phone, Phablets, and smaller than 7″ tablets that would otherwise be running Android are all devices the mobile Windows 10 will be competing for and most of them will be ARM based…
Only in PC systems for which 8″ and larger devices will be covering will you have to worry about running the full desktop Windows 10 and then x86 devices start to dominate in those size ranges…
As for virtualization, it’s still not really a viable option for running a desktop OS on ARM… ARM devices have advanced quite a bit over the last few years but t’s still much easier to just stream or otherwise remote access a PC rather than trying to run a VM of it on a ARM system…
This is encouraging. Is this an indication that Windows 10 is going to handle high-DPI screens better?
Modern/Metro Apps do handle high-DPI and scaling quite well, the Desktop and Desktops apps often don’t, but they are not included on anything non-X86 and below 8″ anyway.
Windows 10 on ARM is pretty much what Windows Phone is right now, nothing more.
Well, aside from the tablet support… which WP presently doesn’t support… This is basically what they meant when they said WP and RT would be merged for Windows 10…
The limited desktop is dropped but the OS now will cover everything from phones to small tablets…
The loss of the desktop is disappointing, but it was very useless anyways. Except that it still let you use the standard IE interface.
Well, IE is basically on its way out… It’ll still be there for legacy support for Windows 10 and both IE and Spartan will have access to both IE/Spartan engines but it looks like the new Spartan browser is what will be the defacto replacement for IE going forward and we’ll have to see how flexible it is on both the desktop and Metro environments…
Some highlighted features for Spartan on even the mobile version includes features like an enhanced note-taking mode in which users can write on webpages then save and share them, a reading list that becomes part of the core browsing experience on all devices, and Cortana.
While there will be a lot of new sync functionality between mobile and desktop, including that the new Xbox app for Windows 10 will let gamers stream and play games from their PCs, as well as save and share video clips from game-play… So, basically, Nvidia’s Tegra streaming function now has some competition…
The input options are also being improved, from being able to adjust the On-Screen keyboard for everything from one hand use to using Cortana like functionality for type as you speak dictation…
The development for Mobile Windows 10 has only started, though, while the desktop development is already a few months in already… But there’s still a lot we won’t know for sure until we’re a lot closer to the final release, Windows 10 is still in beta right now and there’s a lot of final tuning to go through before they’re done…
So it looks like they’ll still be improving it from now until they are nearly ready to release it… making adjustments as the beta testers provide feedback… Meaning, we’ll just have to wait and see if they provide the full check list of improvements we’ve been waiting for or at least get to most of them… but it’s still early… The BUILD 2015 conference in April should be very telling, though…
You raise a good point. I have heard Windows 10 for ARM will not have a Desktop anymore. This might not be an indication of improved DPI-scaling for the desktop environment after all.