14 DAY TRIAL // Low-cost Chinese chip maker Rockchip usually puts its silicone products inside tablets and TV boxes that run Google’s Android software, but this dogma is slowly starting to shift and the company is aiming to conquer new territory.
This year, we witnessed the advent of the first Chromebooks bundling the Rockchip RK3288 architecture. But Rockchip doesn’t seem to want to stop here. So what’s the next step? How about Windows 10?
PadNews got hold of a few photos showcasing an unnamed tablet with 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, a Rockchip RK3288 processor inside, and surprise, surprise, the Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview software loaded on top.
This is a pre-release version of Microsoft’s upcoming software for phones and tablets which will become available this fall, after Windows 10 for desktop, notebooks and big tablets becomes official.
Windows Mobile will allow users to download and install lots of apps from the Windows Store, and the new Continuum for phones that lets you use your phone or small tablet like a desktop computer will also be available. All users need to do is connect a display, keyboard and mouse in order to run apps like Office suite in desktop mode.
Is Windows Phone moving to the low-cost realm?
While most Windows Phone devices until now have been taking advantage of Qualcomm chips, the platform could be tweaked to work on units running Rockchip processors.
The Rockchip RK3288 we see in the screenshots is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A17 processor with Mali-T764 graphics. The performance of this chip is pretty decent, but even so, there are quite a few ARM-based chips around at this moment that can deliver more.
For the time being, we don’t know whether the elusive tablet we’re seeing is a real product or someone just managed to get Windows 10 Mobile to work with Rockchip RK3288 hardware.
Low-cost chipmakers have been getting more and more traction these days. For example, we recently reported that US chip giant Qualcomm entered a partnership with Allwinner in order to push its chips into low-cost tablet offerings in Asia.
So it’s not out of the question for Microsoft to enter an agreement with Rockchip to port its new mobile OS into budget tablets selling in China and related territories.
