More Lenovo Krait Tablet Details: $399 Price Target

We had another opportunity to handle the Lenovo S2110, the first commercial Krait tablet we've seen and had a chance to talk with the product team in a bit more detail. It's clear that Lenovo recognizes the market opportunities for mobile computing, and their line-up of tablets and smartphones will only get bigger. Their phone devices remain targeted primarily at the Chinese market, including the first Medfield phone to come to market, the K800. Lenovo's first generation tablet devices were more varied than what was released Stateside, but starting with the S2110 we should see more of their tablets and at a competitive price point. Lenovo's product manager quoted a target MSRP of just $399 for the 3G version of the S2110, and an aggressive release schedule as soon as Q2 2012. The tablet and keyboard dock would be bundled together for $549, and an LTE variant could presumably come in at a higher price point. 

The pre-production sample they had on hand had less than stellar build quality. We were promised a much more rigid structure once production began, though shipping devices would feature the same textured back as found on the sample we handled. The display had excellent viewing angles and looked great (my picture taking skills notwithstanding), and the keyboard dock was light and had excellent build quality. Ports and expandability on the tablet were scant, though the dock includes full-sized USB and a SD card reader. Ice Cream Sandwich ran smoothly beneath Lenovo's skin, though network connectivity was not available so there was little to do but scroll through the UI.

Lenovo also had a K800 on display which felt smooth and responsive. The handset was lightweight and comfortable in the hand. The alpha sample they had for us to play with featured a substantial 1900 mAh battery, which should help the China only handset deliver excellent battery life. The IdeaPad K2010 is another tablet which, like the K800, will be sold in China only. It's powered by a Tegra 3 SoC and features a 1920x1080 IPS display, like the Asus Transformer Prime TF700T Anand previewed earlier this week. 

Gallery: More Lenovo Krait Tablet Details: $399 Price Target

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Lenovo At CES: Android TV and First Krait Tablet

In 2011, Lenovo made a cursory effort to grab some of the consumer Android tablet space with the 7" K1, and a slightly more concerted effort to grab the enterprise tablet space with the ThinkPad Tablet. This year they seem to be reaching further. In a release ahead of CES Lenovo has revealed two rather interesting products, the K91 Android TV and the S2 Tablet featuring the Qualcomm MSM8960 SoC, the first Krait-powered device announced.

The K91 is a 55" 1080p LED-backlit IPS 3D TV and runs Android 4.0 across that big beautiful screen. This isn't a Google TV device, this set is running a modified Ice Cream Sandwich build complete with Android Market access, voice controls, a 5MP camera for video calls and the ability to interface with Lenovo phones and tablets as either remote controls or secondary displays. The software stack Lenovo is running is heavily modified to unite live TV and Android apps in a carousel style UI. Based on the renders there seems to be little left of the Holo theme, a matter which might contradict that Market access claim. The whole thing is powered by a Qualcomm APQ8060 S3 Snapdragon SoC, and though the release claims that the device is available immediately in China, no price or US availability is mentioned.

Possibly more intriguing than this Android-driven Smart TV is the IdeaTab S2 10 tablet, a 10.1" Android tablet featuring the much awaited MSM8960 S4 Snapdragon SoC. Krait has been a long time coming, and though no release date is provided, this is still a significant milestone on the road to a commercially available device. The chassis is an impressive 0.34" thick and weighs just 1.1 lbs, and comes with a textured back and 1280 x 800 IPS display. Android 4.0 is on order, though Lenovo's Mondrian UI obfuscates the vanilla goodness. We will make a bee line for this thing the moment we have a chance and will get you a hands-on impression as soon as we do. 

Gallery: Lenovo K91 Smart TV and IdeaTab S2 10 Press Images

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Qualcomm's Announces Krait CPU: The Successor to Scorpion

Krait, like Scorpion before it, is a ground-up CPU design by Qualcomm. The architecture will debut at 28nm and run at speeds of up to 2.5GHz. This is compared to the ~2GHz target frequency for high end Cortex A15 devices. Again we know nothing about the architecture or pipeline of Krait so it's impossible to draw any conclusions based on this information alone. Qualcomm announced that Krait is up to 150% faster than "currently available ARM-based CPU cores". Again this could mean anything as ARM11, Cortex A8 and Cortex A9 cores are all "currently available". The Krait cores will be integrated into SoCs in single, dual and quad-core configurations.  First let me explain Qualcomm's nomenclature. There are three prefixes you need to be familiar with: QSD, MSM and APQ. QSD was the original prefix applied to Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs, it has since been retired and replaced with MSM. Going forward you won't see any more QSD products, they'll all be called MSM-something (e.g. MSM8960). The QSD prefix was a remnant of the original marketing strategy behind Snapdragon. If you paid attention to HP's webOS announcements you'll know that the new TouchPad uses a new Qualcomm SoC - the APQ8660. The APQ prefix stands for Application Processor Qualcomm and it refers to an SoC that does not have an integrated modem. The MSM line all have integrated Qualcomm modems making them a single chip solution for those customers who want the added integration. With that out of the way let's get to what's being announced today. Krait will debut in three configurations: a single-core MSM8930, dual-core MSM8960 and quad-core APQ8064. The MSM8960 will be available first, sampling in Q2 2011 and likely in devices a year or so later. The sampling schedule seems a bit aggressive given that it's 28nm but that's what Qualcomm is saying. The MSM8960 integrates a multi-mode 3G/LTE modem, which should make this a very attractive SoC for future high end smartphones. The SoC adds a dual-channel LPDDR2 memory controller and uses an Adreno 225 GPU. Qualcomm states that the 225 is eight times the speed of the original Adreno 200. Given that the Adreno 205 was 2x the 200, that would make the Adreno 225 4x the performance of the fastest Adreno GPUs we have today.  Both the single-core MSM8930 and the quad-core APQ8064 will be sampling in early 2012. The MSM8930 also integrates a 3G/LTE modem but it adds an Adreno 305 GPU. The 305 is supposed to be six times the performance of the original 200. I expect the MSM8930 to be used in upper mainstream smartphones, while the MSM8960 will be more of a high end smartphone SoC. As an APQ, the quad-core 8064 has no integrated modem but it does have four Krait cores (capable of running at asynchronous clock speeds so core 0 could run at a different frequency than core 3 depending on load). This sounds a lot like a tablet SoC. The APQ8064 integrates an Adreno 320 GPU, which Qualcomm says offers performance similar to today's gaming consoles. The 320 features four GPU cores. The Adreno 320 is listed as being 15x the performance of the original Adreno 200.Feeding the CPU cores is LPDDR2 memory interface, although standard DDR3 can also be used. The 8064 also has a PCIe interface and support for up to a 20MP camera. These Krait based SoCs will go up against ARM Cortex A15 based solutions (e.g. TI's OMAP 5). Intel's Medfield (32nm Atom) SoC will also be a competitor here.]]>