Asus may be the first one to start the quad-core tablet revolution, but they won’t be the only ones in the game. HTC, Lenovo and Acer are also gearing up with Tegra 3 tablets that should be available in the next few months. I’m not entirely sure why Nvidia had to delay the Tegra 3 in the first place, because it was supposed to arrive in August this year.
Was it their default or the fault of manufacturers who weren’t ready for it? Since all of them are just starting to come out with their tablets now, I’m thinking it was Nvidia’s fault. This will hurt, once again, Nvidia’s chance at the tablet market, although things should greatly improve compared to the launch of Tegra 2. According to Nvidia:
“We have more design wins in Tegra 3 today than we had at Tegra 2. We have more design wins, more devices, more OEMs.”
So things should be looking up for Nvidia, and also for the tablet manufacturers, who now get to show tablets not only with a quad core chip, but also with Android 4.0.
Lenovo
The Lenovo tablet will have a quad-core 1.6 Ghz Tegra 3 version, that will also be paired with 2 GB of RAM which are DDR3 running at a 1600 Mhz frequency. This is a little strange since Nvidia has said that Tegra 3 can support up to DDR3-1500, so either this spec is wrong or they ramped up the DDR3 support as well, together with the clock speed.
The Asus Transformer Prime is a great all-around tablet, but if you’d ask me which is its weakest point, I’d say the 1 GB of RAM. I believe it’s too little for a tablet, and they should have at least 2 GB of RAM by now – if not 3-4 GB. It’s just that on a tablet you do heavier browsing than on a phone, and you’ll want more tabs open, which will eat quite a bit of RAM. So I’d say 2 GB should be a minimum for tablets.
Acer
Acer is also rumored to launch a Tegra 3 tablet by updating their Iconia tablet with a new design, which hopefully is a lot thinner and more solid, and will feature a better display. That’s what they’ll need to stay competitive. The Acer Iconia was more expensive than the Asus Transformer in spring this year, but also of poorer quality, so they need to sort all that out.
HTC
HTC can’t miss the party, and are rumored to release a Tegra 3 tablet as well next year in February. That’s a little late and dangerously close to the new iPad launch. Plus, I really hope they are not releasing it with Honeycomb, especially if they are going to release it that late. But I know how HTC thinks, and they’ll want to put a skin on Android, but at the very least it should be Android 4.0, otherwise no one will be interested. They also need to stop pricing their tablets $200 above everyone else.