Microsoft Announces Surface Enterprise Initiative, Partners With Dell, HP, And More

This morning, Corporate VP of the Windows and Devices Group Yusuf Mehdi made a fairly startling announcement. Microsoft has created a new partnership to help drive Windows 10 adoption in the enterprise, which the Surface Enterprise Initiative. You wil…

Acer Announces Predator 8 Gaming Tablet With Intel Atom x7 And Android 5.1

Acer has introduced a dedicated gaming tablet called the Predator 8. This is a new play from Acer and has some pretty interesting hardware packed in. All of it is squeezed into an 8.7 mm thin package which weighs in a just 350 grams.

We’ve seen quite a few Android devices being powered by Atom lately, but most have still been on the 22 nm Silvermont cores. There have been a couple of 14 nm Airmont devices announced, and Acer has gone right to the top of the stack with the Intel Atom x7 processor. We’ve taken a look at the new Cherry Trail platform on the Surface 3 Review, and found it to be quite potent especially when you look at the physical chip size. But where it is potent is actually in CPU performance, which has traditionally been Intel’s strength. GPU performance, at least on the Surface 3, was not class leading. It would be great to see this in an Android device though so we can compare it apples to apples with the other top end gaming tablets like the NVIDIA Shield.

The Android 5.1 tablet features a 16:10 display with a 1920×1200 resolution. This is a zero air gap IPS panel which should reduce reflections and refractions within the display stack, and Acer claims it covers 100% of the NTSC color space, which is actually really close to Adobe RGB. This is a wider gamut than most displays can handle but it is actually a problem on Android since it has no color management. Having a gamut that is larger than sRGB means that colors will be oversaturated.

It also has four front-facing speakers and virtual surround sound, which might be kind of interesting on a gaming tablet. You can get the tablet with up to 64 GB of storage, and it also features microSD support for an additional 128 GB of space.

One interesting addition is what Acer is calling Highly Precise Touchscreen. The tablet features smaller touch sensors which are packaged with a higher density on the display which Acer says leads to greater control and accuracy which they say is useful for gaming. It also supports any device with a 2mm fine tip such as a graphite pencil or the optional Acer Accurate Stylus.

Acer has partnered with Newegg on distribution, and Newegg will have an exclusive two week period to offer this tablet starting on November 6. It will retail for $300.

Source: Acer

Lenovo Unveils A Trio Of New Android Tablets.

Today Lenovo has launched three new Android tablets in their YOGA Tab series. In order the new devices are the YOGA Tab 3 8″, the YOGA Tab 3 10″, and the YOGA Tab 3 Pro 10″. The first two tablets are fairly low-end devices, while the YOGA Tab 3 Pro is probably the most unique Android tablet that I have ever seen. You can see how these tablets compare to each other by checking out the spec table below.

The YOGA Tab 3 8″ and 10″ use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 212 SoCs, which are both quad core Cortex A7 parts with Adreno 304 graphics. As for the Yoga Tab 3 Pro 10″, it’s a much more interesting situation. This is one of the first devices shipping with an Intel Airmont SoC, and to my knowledge the first and only Android device to do so. This is Intel’s first Atom SoC built on their 14nm process, and it consists of 4 Atom cores with a peak frequency of 2.24GHz, along with a 12 EU implementation of their Gen8 graphics.

Moving on to the displays, we see that both of the non-pro YOGA Tabs use a 1280×800 IPS LCD. The YOGA Tab Pro steps up significantly with a 10.1″ 2560×1600 IPS LCD. It’s fairly clear that the non-pro YOGA Tabs are intended to be low-end tablets, with the pro model packing the more powerful specifications. One that immediately pops out is the battery capacity. At 38.76Wh, it is the biggest battery I’ve ever seen in an Android tablet, and it rivals the enormous batteries that Apple had to put in the 2012 models of the iPad. Lenovo claims that the YOGA Tab 3 Pro 10″ will last up to 18 hours on its battery.

The YOGA Tab 3 Pro 10″ also has a couple more interesting features. While both of the non-pro models feature two front facing speakers positioned in the tube at the end of the device, the YOGA Tab 3 Pro 10″ has four front-facing speakers, along with Dolby’s Atmos 3D surround sound processing. It also features a pico projector that can project an image up to 70″ in size with a brightness of 50 nits. Lenovo states that the projector can be rotated using gesture controls, although it’s not explained exactly how this works or what it entails.

Lenovo hasn’t set a firm date for the launch of any of these tablets, but their press release states that these are part of their holiday lineup, and so if you’re interested in buying one you should be able to pick one up sometime in December at the latest. Prices for the YOGA Tab 3 8″ and 10″ are unknown, but the YOGA Tab 3 Pro 10″ is priced at $499 for the WiFi model, and $599 for the LTE model.