14 DAY TRIAL // Just this week, it was reported that Dell had finally started rolling the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update for its budget duo of Android tablets, the Venue 7 and Venue 8.
In the meantime, Dell also appears to be working on improved versions of the two slates mentioned above. The prolific folks at MobileGeeks have managed to locate the Dell Venue 8 3840 model, which appeared in a benchmark listing not so long ago.
While the original Venue 8 3830 came bundling an Intel Atom Z2580 “Clover Trail+” chip, the new model seems to come with a faster, better chip, which is probably Intel’s brand new Merrifield platform.
According to info posted at A1Dev, the new Dell Venue 8 3840 has been equipped with a 2.13 GHz processor, Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box and 1GB of RAM.
It would certainly be good to have a device running KitKat from the get-go, as the OTA pushed for the current Venue 7 and Venue 8 is said to be causing some devices to brick.
Moving on, the PassMark benchmark results have shown that the 2.13GHz processor is in fact a dual-core chip and have also revealed that the chip will provide a decent, adequate performance. After all, the results place it before the original HTC One, Samsung Galaxy Note and the Google Nexus 7 (2012).
Intel offers a mobile 2.13 GHz dual-core chip that comes in the form of the Atom Z3480. This is a low-power, 64-bit processor that has been designed for smartphones and tablets.
But there’s something that should be highlighted here. The Dell Venue 8 running on Clover Trail+ comes equipped with 2GB of RAM, while the new Venue that showed up benchmarks has only 1GB.
Hopefully, Dell will up things in this department once it’s time for the slate to hit retail, especially considering that the Merrifield platform can support up to 4GB of RAM.
Currently, Dell is selling the Venue 8 with $180 a pop, but we have no information that reveals how much the company plans to price the new model.
And since a new model of the Dell Venue 8 has popped up online, we can soon expect to see the smaller version, the Venue 7, get a revamp configuration too.