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Asus Transformer Drops Quad-core In Favor of Dual-core
MrSeb writes with this news from Extreme Tech: "In a move that will shock and disgust bleeding-edge technophiles everywhere, Asus has announced at Mobile World Congress 2012 that its new Transformer Pads — the high-end Infinity Series — will use the recently-announced dual-core Qualcomm S4 SoC. The critically acclaimed Transformer Prime, the Infinity Series' predecessor which was released at the end of 2011, used the quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3. Why the sudden about-face? Well, the fact that quad-core processors don't really have a use case in mobile devices is one reason — but it doesn't hurt that the Krait cores in the S4 are significantly faster than the four Cortex-A9 cores in the Tegra 3, too. The S4 is also the first 28nm SoC, while Tegra 3 is still on 40nm, which means a smaller and cheaper package, and lower power consumption to boot. The S4 is also the first SoC with built-in LTE, which was probably a rather nice sweetener for Asus."
The Snapdragon S4 "Krait" CPU is still a bit shrouded in mystery as far as hard specs (Qualcomm has never been one to release docs), but it appears to be similar to the Cortex-A15 in performance; how they stand up to Intel's new Medfield designs remains to be seen.
In other words after carefully considering all their options and went with the one that offered the best overall package, whilst keeping the price point competetive? Not nerd willy-waving, then? Jolly good.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Why is everyone obsessed at the number of cores? The more processors you ahve, the more complex scheduling your apps needs to perform to actually work faster. It's better to hav ea single core that is twice as fast, than two cores running in parallel.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I thought 3 and 5 core tablets were supposed to be coming out, where the "odd" core is so underpowered it can be left on when the screen and other cores are off, using practically no battery but still letting the tablet run its background processes.
I'm surprised more emphasis isn't being put on improving "standby" battery time because that seems to be the real killer in so many mobile applications these days (like my 14h SGS2 battery of doom).
In a website like this, yes, people care about that. You seem to be lost, the appstore is that way --->.
From what I articles I saw yesterday I gathered that there would be two levels of the new Asus pads. One with the Tegra and the other with the new Krait. Here is one article that talks about it: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5586/the-asus-transformer-pad-infinity-1920-x-1200-display-krait-optional
Of course we won't know anything for sure until Asus releases the product details.
The wifi model will still use the Tegra 3. The LTE model will use the Snapdragon http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2827588/asus-transformer-pad-infinity-series-and-transformer-pad-300-series
The Tegra3 isn't compatible with any LTE modems and won't be for several months so ASUS opted to use the S4 for all 3g/4g transformers so they could have something for carriers to sell nowish. The Wifi only models will keep using the Tegra3. Either way this isn't really something ASUS can fix itself since Nvidia never bothered getting its product to support any LTE modems.
First HTC suddenly drops its quad core chip for a dual in a phone that
was supposed to have a quad core chip since it was leaked back in July.
And days later, Asus drops a quad in favor of a dual core.
Same chip was dropped.
Someone... is keeping a secret. There is a problem with the quad core
chip and 'something' new(er) that is appearing in the phones. I read that
an LTE chip appeared in the "One X", while the quad core disappeared.
Is LTE and quad core not playing nice? Are there production shortages?
Overheating issues, battery issues?
The whole story isn't out. I'm curious what it is. I've been waiting
and salivating at the promised "Quad" core offerings for smartphones.
The Samsung SIII is supposedly going to have one, but from a different
company, their own Exynos chip. So, we won't see that quad be cut in half.
Hopefully.
Regardless of what the non-power users say about not needing more cores,
I see my dual cores maxed out regularly. I need the extras, I was willing to
sell my life, I mean soul, I mean sign a new 2 year contract for it.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
The problem is Tegra does not support LTE - this is a problem for sales in the USA.
Europe will continue to get the full spec, full speed, Nvidia Tegra3 devices
It has nothing to do with the quad core aspect of the Tegra3 and everything to do with Nvidia being stupid and not bothering to get it supported/certified by any of the LTE chipset manufacturers.
They announced two Infinity models. Once of them has LTE/3G and the dual-core S4, the other is Wi-fi only and is still toting a 1.6GHz Tegra 3.
And behold, a command prompt and he who sat upon it, his name was shutdown and -h 3:11 followed with him
Ummm Tegra 2 was the fastest platform for Android for quite some time. The G Tablets are still pretty blazingly fast. The issue is just that Tegra 2 was released for such a short time before Tegra 3 came out that it never got much saturation, and then Tegra 3 came out with a bunch of faster options close on its heels.
NVidia has great hardware engineers, but awful software driver people on their mobile platform. They have done a terrible job supporting their chipsets after release with Android, or getting good manufacturers to adopt them.
It's the "latest and greatest" 3G cellular data network.
Android has some sort of a built-in low power push-like mechanism that was implemented starting with Android 2.2 (Froyo), called C2DM. It's not quite real push, but the battery life is stupid good.
I'd assume Skype uses C2DM, as do most IM apps...
http://code.google.com/android/c2dm/
I'd say that the new Samsung phone with the projector has 6GB of RAM, so I'd go for it. It's not a tablet, but since you can use it as a 50" screen it should be enough for your needs?
And you have to understand, you're the 0.01%. Most people with your requirements will get a computer (any i7 notebook should fill your needs and give you 10 times the power of any tablet).
What's your specific problem? Maybe something else is more suited.
You've taken a big (and wrong) leap to go from "Tegra 3 doesn't currently work with any LTE radios" to "Quadcores CAN'T work on US cellular networks- presently"
You could factually say "There are not currently any quad core SoCs on the market that are compatible with LTE".
The problem is, the Tegra does not have an LTE radio/modem on the SoC. This means it's a seperate chip and the current chips do not pla nicely with the Tegra. Qualcomn has pulled a major upset with their new design as the SnapDragon is faster, uses less power and includes the needed LTE radio on the die. The only area where the Qualcomn offering sucks tits on a worm is graphics as the Tegra beats the hell out of it like a red headed step-child but that's the only thing it wins.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
That's not necessarily true. The Adreno 225 in the current Krait is slower than the 320 that'll be coming later in the year but it still trades benchmarks with Tegra3 in graphics tests.
Notably, the GLbenchmark offscreen test where the Tegra3 wins the most by, has a severe bug somewhere.