The Microsoft Surface 3 may be the first tablet to ship with an Intel Atom “Cherry Trail” processor. But more are on the way… possibly including an 8 inch Android tablet that Notebook Italia spotted this month at the Intel Developer Forum in China.

The tablet, which is powered by an Intel Atom X5-8300 processor appears to be manufactured by BYD, but it has the Lenovo name on it.

lenovo cherry

It’s not clear if Lenovo will sell this specific tablet, but the prototype/reference design gives us an idea of what to expect from Android tablets with mid-range Cherry Trail processors.

The tablet features an 8 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and Android 5.0 Lollipop software. It has front and rear cameras, WIFi, Bluetooth, and optional support for 3G or 4G networks.

In other words, expect tablets with Intel Atom Cherry Trail chips to look a lot like tablets with 2013-era Intel Atom Bay Trail chips… they’ll just offer better performance, especially when it comes to graphics.

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23 replies on “Lenovo shows off Cherry Trail Android tablet prototype”

  1. Meh, Give me a Thinkpad 8 sucessor running Windows 8.1 (or 10) with 4gb ram, 64gb storage under 400usd and we are game, Lenovo.

  3. I wanted to compare Android 4.4.2 and Windows 8.1, so I bought a couple of tablets back in January. iRulu 7″ IPS RK3288 1GB Android and Winbook TW700 7″ IPS Z3735G Win 8.1. $60 each. Both pretty nice for news, maps, weather, media, and simple web browsing. Both work well and responsive. Trying to decide which makes the most sense for my next phone. Android seems best, because you need a good selection of touch screen apps for a small screen device. But a tablet is not a cell phone and it’s not a laptop, so spending more than $100 is probably a waste of money. Cherry Trail or Bay Trail. 2GB or 4GB. Doesn’t matter. The tablet fad has had its day.

  5. I really hope lenovo ditches their terrible iOS UI that’s in their previous tablets.

    1. But then the Surface 3 starts around $500 and it’s likely we’ll see both Windows and Android tablets with same family chips as low as $100 – just like we have today. Wouldn’t be surprised to see something like this lenovo going for $200 or so.

      1. I don’t think we’ll see Cherry Trail tablets in the $100 range any time soon. It looks like Intel’s contra-revenue won’t apply to the Atom X line.

        1. Cherrytrail has a secret weapon: it is a very small die. Once 14nm yields are high, it is very cheap to make. If they feel the need to sell it inexpensively it will not lose money.

          https://seekingalpha.com/article/1882851-intels-broxton-die-size-revealed
          https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=z28uVb6JA8PjoATRpIGQDQ&url=https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/08/intel-corporation-cherry-trail-die-size-revealed.aspx&ved=0CB8QFjAA&usg=AFQjCNEfMzC57zgb8JVKgBZGdsWn3l3qow&sig2=w7poiCKC6p4bC2XUj_GP2A

      2. 200$ is a lot to be fair and 200$ 7-8 inch tabs should have better chips than this.
        The Surface 3 is 200$ too much.
        This Atom X5-8300 is maybe worth 5-7$, depending on how GPU perf is, seems aimed at quad A53 SoCs.

        1. Uh, I don’t necessarily disagree that the x5 is worth less and probably compares better to quad A53 SoCs but your estimates on pricing for the Surface 3 seem way off…

          First, the SoC alone doesn’t determine the entire cost of a device, especially as they account for a very tiny portion of the total system costs… So you’d have to factor what the entire device offers to really determine what price range they should fall into…

          Second, name me a single device that’s $200 cheaper than the Surface 3 and still offers a built in digitizer, full size USB port, built in kick stand, similar size and build quality, and display port?

          Samsung Galaxy Note 2 10.1″ HD just has the approximate similar size and a digitizer and that was already priced a lot higher than the Surface 3 when it was first released and it’s still priced higher in most places despite being deeply discounted now… and that’s offering less storage, fewer port options, etc.

          To actually take $200 off what the Surface 3 offers, you’d basically end up with the Asus T90Chi… Using a cheaper BT keyboard, optional pen you still have to pay extra for, and reduced performance/spec parts in a overall smaller and lower build quality design…

          If that’s what you want then get a Asus T90Chi but don’t expect everything the Surface 3 offers for the pricing…

          The cheaper devices just give less in the various aspects of the device… So we can’t just look at the SoC and set a flat pricing when the design of the device can cause the price to vary over a pretty large price range… depending on what it actually offers besides just the SoC…

          1. First i’ll point out that the SoC in this article is more of an A53 competitor not the one in the Surface 3. The one in the Surface 3 is faster, guess you could compare it with very high clocked A53 if you have to.
            The pen is a small niche , Samsung has high prices and if you want to look at costs we could do that too. Full size USB or DP not very sure why it matters and the kickstand is a huge negative since it’s a waste of space, without it you could gain quite a bit of battery life.
            The Surface 3 is a mid range tablet with price above where high end tabs should be.A not very fast SoC , just 1920×1280 screen, just 2GB RAM and so on. Screen prices have dropped hard recently on China display makers ramping production and they’ll keep dropping. 64GB of NAND is some 20-25$ depending on perf and purchasing power. RAM is not that cheap but 2GB is not much either.Sticking a touchscreen on a netbook doesn’t double the price.You can easily get a lot more for plenty less.When the Surface launched the Lenvov Miix 2 10 inch full HD 64GB was about 320$ with the keyboard included on Amazon, now it went up to 400$ but that’s still a lot less than the 629$ you pay for the Surface 3 + keyboard. Sure the SoC is older but the CPU perf is similar and the GPU doesn’t matter since it’s in both cases not fit for PC gaming. That’s just the first example i could find in 2 mins but there are lots of options and with most you get more for your money.

          2. You didn’t have to clarify about the SoC comparison… I already said I didn’t disagree with you on that part… Just on your price estimate for the Surface 3!

            And no, the pen cost a lot because it’s not a cheap technology!

            WACOM based digitizers are even more expensive than the n-Trig but you don’t need batteries for the pen with WACOM and it’s generally more accurate with larger pressure sensitivity range…

            While it’s only niche because it has been a premium option up till now… Asus Chi series is one of the first to offer the option in budget range… but whether it’s niche or not is irrelevant to the fact it’s part of what you’re paying for!

            While all the other features matter because they give you options you usually don’t get with lower priced tablets!

            Get a tablet with a microUSB… Good luck powering external devices like USB HDDs with it… and you’ll often need a port adapter for most USB peripherals that just add to the things you have to carry and most microUSB are 2.0 and thus you don’t get the speed of a USB 3.0 port…

            Display Port means you can support multiple external monitors and each can support up to 4K a lot more easily than HDMI options…

            Most mobile devices still won’t offer more than 2GB of RAM, most low cost Windows devices won’t even offer more than 64GB of storage and usually you’ll get less with those dropping below $149 also tending to drop to the 16GB range and 1GB RAM range…

            So, unless you can show any device with all the features and capabilities of the Surface for $200 less then that’s a really exaggerated price point you want… $50-$80 would be reasonable but $200 is basically asking MS to give the Surface 3 for less than it’s worth…

            Your Lenovo Miix 2 failed to account for the lower specs, like an even lower end Z3740, lower spec cameras, lower build quality, no Kick Stand, micro HDMI requires a adapter for most monitors/TVs and is usually less reliable than the full size port (also limited to 1080P), and no full size USB port… Not to mention 32bit only and no 4GB RAM option… (Z3740 supports up to 4GB of RAM)… The keyboard only has one position and the magnet can’t hold the keyboard if you grab it by the tablet… Never mind the Lenovo Miix series is specifically their budget range and not the business class like their Thinkpad Tablet series… So you might as well compare it to the Asus Transformer Book series…

            Besides, things like up to 2x the graphical performance of Bay Trail means you can at the very least play games that you couldn’t on Bay Trail or barely ran… Like Portal 2 had pretty low fps on Bay Trail but could get much more playable fps with Cherry Trail…

            You don’t need to be able to play the latest games at mid to high settings to not still enjoy the graphical improvement this offers over Bay Trail… While there’s such a thing as mobile gaming and running older games…

        2. $200 too much for a alloy build with FULL HD+ screen, digitizer and 64GB ?

          Common show me a $300 tablet with 64GB storage not made of plastic and has a full HD screen.

      1. The 8173 is not out yet, the numbers keep going up as the software is not final and it’s not even certain those results are with final clocks or lower so i picked the newest one.

        1. There are an awful lot of results for a product that haven’t been released yet. It speaks of fanboys getting hold of the hardware and messing around…Until I see results from something other than “alps tb8173p1” I’d have to take any MT8173 benchmarks with a grain of salt.
          Compare that to the Surface 3 (Z8700) which is in imminent release status. 11 results with very stable numbers and in line with the Intel reference Z8700 platform.

          Sorry for the Segue.

          1. The MT8173 is in no products yet, at all , it’s not shipping yet and it should take a few more months before it will be in the wild.That’s a dev board and it’s a work in progress,it’s how they do with pretty much all their chips.
            If anything those results are low, since it’s A72 and at 2.4GHz it should do better than the A57 in the Exynos 7420.
            .

    1. That’s what I was thinking too. That power cord looks a little on the big side for micro-usb doesn’t it.

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