Chinese chip maker Allwinner says tablets powered by its new low-power, dual-core A23 processor are due to ship starting in October. That basically means you’ll see low-cost tablets from Chinese device makers shipping entry-level tablets based around the new 40nm processor soon.
Allwinner says at launch we should see tablets with 7, 7.85, and 9 inch displays and screen resolutions ranging from 800 x 480 to 1280 x 800.
The Allwinner A23Â chip is said to use 50 percent less power than competing dual-core chips such as the Rockchip RK3168 — although based on my experience with Allwinner devices, I wouldn’t be surprised if it also offers a fraction of the performance.
It’s an ARM Cortex-A7 dual core processor with a clock speed of 1.5 GHz, which makes it a bit faster than the Allwinner A20 chip which launched earlier this year.
Maybe this will be the year that shenzen wakes up to the fact that GPS and Bluetooth are no longer an option but a necessity in modern devices.
It would go a long way towards making up for the mediocre SOCs they’re using.
“necessity” and “modern” are mere weasel words, the way you use them. I would be perfectly fine with SOCS without GPS/Bt, if that would simplify design or reduce power consumption.
Reduced complexity is worth those absences to me, so you should use less absolute words if you want to be accurate: there is at least one person thinking you have been not.
Necessity huh?
I’ve been with Android since early 2009, when the T-Mobile G1 came to Europe. I’ve used every Version of Android starting with 1.1 all the way up to 4.2.2 on my current Phone and Tablet.
In all of that time i used Bluetooth TWICE for getting files off of somebody elses phone, and while i do use GPS for things like Google Maps on my Phone from Time to Time, i have NEVER needed GPS on a Tablet, not even once. So i can say that i need NEITHER of these “necessities” on Tablets, and only one of them in Phones, so i could give a rats ass about them in dedicated Tablet SoCs.