ARM’s Cortex-A15 processors are powerful chips that offer performance that’s almost on-par with what you’d expect from a low power desktop PC processor. But if you want to buy a tablet with an ARM Cortex-A15 chip today you’re pretty much limited to buying a Google Nexus 10 tablet.
But that could change soon.
AndroidPC.es reports that Chinese electronics makers Ramos and Smart Devices are both working on new tablets with ARM’s latest processor technology.
Ramos is reportedly planning to use the same Samsung Exynos 5250 processor found in the Google Nexus 10 — but if previous Ramos tablets are anything to judge by, the upcoming tablet could be even more affordable than Google’s tablet (which is built by Samsung and sold for $399 and up).
Smart Devices, on the other hand, hasn’t actually specified which ARM Cortex-A15 chip it plans to use, but AndroidPC.es guesses that it could be a TI OMAP 5 processor. While Texas Instruments has largely shifted gears in the past year to focus on the enterprise market rather than the consumer space, the company does have a series of speedy chips in the works — and Smart Devices has regularly used TI chips in the past.
Texas Instruments also tends to offer decent support for Linux as well as Android, and it’s possible that the upcoming Smart Devices tablets could support Android and Ubuntu.
Seems to me through my research that the tablets, here in order of quality, would be the ones to look at: Google NEXUS 10 (still the clear winner), then ALL-WINNER (watch out for the limited a8 processors), then Rockchip. My experience with the Rockchip tablets was seriously tainted by the regrettable purchase of a iRULU tablet for $99 on Amazon. It was really a bad tablet, like most things, it is true with tablets; you get what you pay for. Check out the new ONDA branded tablets on Amazon, right HERE:
https://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=onda%20v972%20quad%20core&linkCode=ur2&rh=n%3A172282%2Ck%3Aonda%20v972%20quad%20core&sprefix=onda%2Celectronics%2C121&tag=tru873x395-20&url=search-alias%3Delectronics
These are very promising and for about 3/4 the price of the Google NEXUS 10!
Freescale?
Thought TI has shut down the OMAP department!?
Can Rockchip and AllWinner create A15 ARMs too?
They can but I suppose they are a year or two behind the curve
AllWinner seem to be focusing on A7 chips, which makes sense, given their usual focus on affordability. The A20 and A31 are already available. I think Rockchip are doing similar.
A15s aren’t just more expensive chips, they also necessitate other extra expenses, e.g. higher capacity batteries.