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Computex 2013 may be all about devices with Intel’s Haswell chips (with a little room for AMD’s latest processors and NVIDIA’s new Tegra 4), but a few device makers are starting to show off products featuring next-generation Atom processors.
Intel plans to launch its Atom Bay Trail platform by the end of the year, and chips in the Bay Trail family are expected to offer enough of a performance boost over last year’s models that Intel is even going to market some chips as Celeron or Pentium processors rather than Atom.
Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.
- Early look at a few 8 to 10 inch tablets with Intel Atom Bay Trail chips
Intel won’t release its new Atom Bay Trail chips until later this year, but device makers are starting to show off tablets with the next-gen chips at the Computex trade show in Taiwan this week. [Mobile Geeks] - Splashtop, Intel let you remotely wake a PC that’s connected to WiFi
Splashtop offers remote desktop software that lets you login to a PC from a tablet or other device and remote control it… but that only works if both devices are powered up. Soon you may be able to use Splashtop to remotely turn on a PC (assuming it supports “wake over WiFi”) [Engadget] - Asus Transformer Book 13″ convertible getting a Haswell upgrade
Asus may have just released the Transformer Book 13 inch ultrabook with a detachable tablet portion. But a new model should hit the streets within a few months, packing a faster, more efficient Haswell CPU. [Ultrabook News] - NFC is coming to Chromebooks
NFC stands for “near field communication,” and it’s a technology that lets two devices talk to each other securely over a very short distance. It can be used for secure mobile payments, for instance. And soon it may be available in Chromebooks. [François Beaufort] - Razer Blade 14 inch gaming laptop now up for pre-order
Got $1800 or more burning a hole in your pocket and an itch to do some heavy duty gaming on the go? [Razer] - MK805 II Android TV Box with Allwinner A20 dual-core CPU sells for about $60
If this tiny computer looks familiar, you’ve probably been following the Android mini PC space for a while. It’s basically an upgraded version of one of the first Android TV boxes to hit the market about a year ago. [CNX Software] - Download the new Gmail 4.5 app for Android with slide-out navigation
A few weeks ago, Google introduces a redesigned user interface for its mobile Gmail apps, featuring new automatic labels and a navigation pane that slides out from the left side of the screen. Some users are now getting the updated Android app automatically, but if you don’t want to wait you can download the app early. [Android Police]
You can keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
“MK805 II Android TV Box with Allwinner A20 dual-core CPU sells for about $60”
Same link as razor blade
Whoops! Thanks, I fixed the link.
The Clover Trail based Acer W3 with an 8″ screen has 8 hours of battery life (claimed). The linked 8″ Bay Trail tablet has a 4 hour battery life (claimed).
Isn’t Bay Trail supposed to help with power and cooling needs? Or are these claimed numbers just not representable of real world use at all (can be either higher or lower instead of the usual higher than real world life)?
Have to wait till they give specifics on the hardware… Use of mAh for the battery is purposely vague, only WHr can give a better comparison.
Also how the tablet is designed matters… while considering the 8″ device is 20g lighter than the Acer 8″ Clover Trail tablet that it’s probably using a smaller battery too!
I wonder why the Bay Trail tablets only go down to 8″. Also the battery life numbers are pretty low and that’s what the OEM’s claiming so it’s actually even lower.
My guess is that they simply can’t fit a big enough battery into the 7″ form factor without making it prohibitively thick.
Those were just engineering samples from Shenzhen manufacturer CZC… Intel leaves it up to OEM but they can still go down to 7″ if they wanted to…
As to the battery life, those models were using the so called retina resolution displays.
One of the things people don’t realize about the higher resolutions is they require more power to run. This is a combination of requiring more back lighting, because the higher pixel density means it’s harder for light to show through, and running all those extra pixels means more work for both the CPU and GPU of the device.
One of the reasons why the Apple iPad has one of the largest battery of any tablet its size was to compensate for the increased power consumption of their high res screens and quad GPUs!
Now that other OEMs are starting to do the same it means power consumption will go up significantly for most of them… Like the demo of the updated Asus Transformer Infinity with Tegra 4 is showing some issues with providing as much battery life as they wanted it to because similarly they upped the resolution to 2560×1600…
Though the impact may be less significant in final production models… When the retina iPad, 3rd gen, first came out it had power issues but they fixed that with the fourth gen that also managed to reduce the power consumption of the screen but not everyone will necessarily be able to get those more power efficient parts…
The site says the 8″ Bay Trail tablet has a 1280 x 800 resolution similar to the W3.
For that particular 8″ but the others were using the 2560×1440/1600 resolution screens!
While for the 8″ they either stuck it with a smaller battery, mAh doesn’t really tell us the capacity as WHr would, or they’re using the non-tablet version of Bay Trail…
Bay Trail comes in three versions… Tablet, Mobile, and Desktop… The Mobile version will be sold under Celeron branding and the Desktop under Pentium… Only the Tablet version keeps TDP ≤ 3W…
Mind also these are devices from Shenzhen manufacturer CZC, they’re hardly known for making the best quality tablets!