Acer announced the eight inch Iconia W3 Windows 8 tablet earlier this week, but now we have confirmation of a tablet design that will run the upcoming Windows 8.1 upgrade from Microsoft on an even smaller seven-inch screen.
MobileGeeks.de reports that, during Computex 2013 this week in Taiwan, they came across "Lyon", the code name for a Windows 8.1 tablet reference design made by Inventec. The tablet won't actually be sold by Inventec but was made to be used by other PC manufacturers.
The specs for the seven-inch Lyon tablet include an all aluminum body with a 1280×800 IPS display, offering pixel density of 216ppi. The processor is based on Intel's upcoming Bay Trail-M design, with four cores and a clock speed of 1.66 GHz. There will be 2 GB of RAM inside, and storage options of either 64 or 128 GB, with a microSD card slot for even more storage expansion.
The tablet can hold both a front and rear facing camera, but the megapixel size of both will be up to the PC OEMs that will use the reference design. WiFi is the only wireless connection option; there are no plans to add a 3G or 4G antenna. As far as battery life goes, the tablet currently clocks in at a rather poor 3.5 hours of video playback, but the company claims that both hardware and driver optimizations could increase the battery life before it goes on sale.
PC OEM makers could start selling tablets that use the Inventec Lyon reference design sometime this fall, around the time the final RTM version of Windows 8.1 wil be launched by Microsoft. Microsoft has already announced that all Windows 8.x tablets smaller than 10 inches will get a free version of Office 2013.
Source: MobileGeeks.de
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