When Intel was under fire and deemed incompetent in the smartphone category, industry experts wrote off Intel saying “Intel can’t make smartphones”! Smartphones and tablets were almost always powered by ARM-based, power efficient processors.
It is with the introduction of Atom processors that Intel, finally, is proving to be a strong contender in this segment. With the recent announcement of its new Atom Z2760 “Clover trail” chip, claimed to be a very efficient, thin and compatible power system, Intel brings an end to the woes of tablet manufactures of having to choose between power-efficient processors and thin, light weight ones.
The Clover trail is a system on chip platform designed specifically for smartphones and tablets. Powered by the very famous x86 instruction set and 1.8 GHz dual core clock speed, Intel claims it can deliver a 10-hour battery life and a 3 week stand by time for tablets running Windows 8 OS. It is said to have a TDP(Thermal Design Power) of 1.7 watt meaning it requires much less cooling. Compare this to a laptop which has a TDP of almost 20 watt .
Intel’s tablet( a tablet taken just for reference, and does not exist in reality) can be as light as around 680 g and as thin as 8.5 mm! It is also capable of built-in WiFi and 3G and 4G and NFC(Near Field Communication).
This processor was specifically designed with Google for the Linux/Android operating system.
Devices that are powered by Clover trail chips are:
- Asus Vivo Tablet,
- Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2
- Samsung Series 5 Slate (XE500T1C-A01US)
- Acer Iconia W510
- Hewlett-Packard Envy x2
- Dell Latitude 10
- Samsung Ativ