SAMSUNG
Samsung had a number of
gadgets for us at its press conference, but the ones that truly grabbed the attention
were the new PRO tablets.
Available in screen sizes from 8.4 to 12.2 inches, the new slates are versatile and powerful enough to be used for serious work and entertainment purposes alike. Learn more about them below!
“We created the
Galaxy NotePRO and TabPRO series to kick-off a year in which Samsung truly
establishes its leadership in the tablet market,” said JK Shin, CEO and
President of IT & Mobile Division, Samsung Electronics. “This new line
offers the best-in-class content consumption and productivity, combining a
stunning viewing experience with Samsung’s design legacy. The Samsung Galaxy
NotePRO and TabPRO truly demonstrate our commitment to providing our customers
with extraordinarily versatile product offerings, tailored to tablet users of
every description.”
That's quite a statement, yet even we can't offer
much in the way of disagreement – these new slates pack some pretty awesome
specs and are truly diverse in their appeal, as they offer just about every
form factor. As you've probably guessed, these come in three sizes: 8.4-inches,
10.1-inches and the downright giant 12.2-inches, and yet here's the best part: practically
everything about the internals is identical, with the exception of the amount
of memory on board, the battery's capacity, weight and dimensions. That's
great, seeing as all 4G LTE variations of the trio are packing Qualcomm's
2.3GHz bin of its mighty quad-core Snapdragon 800, while the Wi-Fi+3G models
pack Samsung's promising Exynos 5420 chipset. That latter one runs ARM's
big.LITTLE configuration.
Meaning that four powerful 1.9GHz Cortex-A15
cores are working alongside a cluster of four, more frugal 1.3GHz Cortex-A7
ones that take care of the mundane, background tasks, all the while conserving
power. Best of all, Samsung has long promised that a future software update
will make it possible for the octa-core chipset to utilize all of its cores at
once, should those ever be required. Moreover, a healthy 2GB of RAM is being
made available for the smaller, TabPRO 8.4 and TabPRO 10.1 slates, while the
TabPRO 12.2 packs the still
rare 3GB of RAM.
Asus
Asus
had a lot to grab our attention with at its media event. Three new smartphones
were made official along with a new Padfone mini model and the Padfone X for
AT&T. An awesome Windows/Android convertible was also announced and you can
learn more about it in the description
1) ASUS
Transformer Book (4 in ONE) - detachable combo with Windows 8.1 and Android
ASUS
just blew the serious computing doors open at CES with the announcement of
the Transformer Book Duet TD300. Dubbed as the "world’s first
quad-mode, dual-OS laptop and tablet convertible," it lets you
alternate between Windows 8.1 and Android 4.2 with a push of the dedicated
Instant Switch button.
The detachable tablet part sports a 13.3-inch Full HD display, and
up to an Intel Core i7 processor, as well as 4GB DDR3L 1600 RAM, and up to 128
GB SSD. The dock can add up to 1TB of storage more via a HDD, and it features
most of the ports - 1 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, 10/100Mbit/s LAN, HDMI 1.4,
audio combo jack, and a DC jack, while the tablet part sports a Micro SD card,
headphone jack and a DC jack only. The 38WHr battery, estimated battery life
around 5 hours in Windows 8.1 and 6 hours in Android 4.2.2. In addition, we get
802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR connectivity.
The Transformer Book Duet is a pretty cool concept, which,
however, comes a tad thick and heavy, with the tablet half measuring 342.7 x
216.3 x 12.9 mm, while the dock adds 340.9 x 217.6 x 16 mm, and the whole
contraption together weighs around 1.9 kg, which is not the best achievement
out there. Availability for the intriguing dual-OS convertible of ASUS will be
announced at a later date, but the price is known, and it starts off at the
very reasonable $599 level.
2) Padphone Mini
Asus is giving a serious
boost to its PadFone family of products this year, with not one but
two new successors to the original concept. Dubbed the PadFone mini, the
smartphone-that-becomes-a-tablet is hopping onto the mini craze bandwagon with
a miniature, 4-inch smartphone and an equally compact 7-inch tablet dock.
Unlike the equally new Padfone X, we have quite some
information on what the the PadFone mini has going for it in terms of hardware.
The aforementioned 4-inch TFT panel sports a WVGA resolution of 480x800 pixels,
or about 233ppi, while the tablet dock touts a slightly less-crisp 800x1280
pixel TFT display (~215ppi). In charge of all the brain-work are a 1.6GHz
dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 chipset and 1GB of LPDDR2 RAM, both of which should
provide a mostly smooth experience, considering the manageable pixel count.
On
the photography front, things are looking even better, for an 8-megapixel
Sony-made BSI unit with f/2.0 aperture and five-element lens is what we're
dealing with. We're actually told to expect some pretty awesome low-light shots
and an easy-to-use interface, thanks to Asus' proprietary PixelMaster software,
though do keep in mind that this is likely more of a marketing talk than
anything else.
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