14 DAY TRIAL // Whether cheaper than the rest of not, it appears that a new tablet from Acer is going to hit the road soon, or at least will be officially exposed soon, featuring the x86-Android hardware-software combo.
There are already a fair bunch of Android-loaded tablets on the market that are either on sale or close to reaching stores.
What most of them have in common, however, is the fact that they are powered by the ARM architecture, like the Tegra 2 SoC.
Then again, the Android OS is not limited to just that CPU technology, having full support for x86 chips as well.
As such, the Intel Oak Trail Atom Z670 central processing unit, like all that will come after it, can handle Android just fine.
On this note, Acer is said to be working on this very sort of slate PC, based on the Oak Trail processor but running Android 3.0 instead of Windows or MeeGo or whatever else.
As one would expect, no sort of details are known at the moment, although it is obvious that a touchscreen will be involved, along with Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth (probably) and maybe 3G.
Either way, Compal Electronics will be the one tasked with the production of the products, while sales are slated to commence during the month of July.
Lenovo and ASUS should also have similar tablet PCs out soon after, especially now that Intel is providing subsidies and technical support to downstream partners.
The main goal of this move on Acer's part is to somehow attract a different consumer group than the one susceptible to the wiles of the ARM low-power processors.
All in all, the tablet should have better performance than those of today, even as it sticks to the same price. If the $100 overall price cut really happens, the company might have a real winner on its hands.