ASUS Transformer Pad (2013) Officially Announced at IFA 2013

The awaited successor to the Transformer Pad Infinity that ASUS announced back in Computex 2013 is finally unveiled. The new flagship 10-incher, named just "Transformer Pad", codename TF701T, is encased by a stylish signature aluminium design and weighs just 585g and is 8.9mm thick. Svelte as it is, it packs a lot of power with a 5 MP rear camera capable of 1080p HDR video, a 1.2 MP front camera, and a top-notch 10.1" IGZO LED-Backlit IPS panel with a crisp 2560 x 1600 resolution (299ppi). The device will be powered by a very powerful NVIDIA Tegra 4 SoC, which, if you don't remember, consists of four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.9GHz plus a beefy 72-core GeForce GPU. Tegra 4 gives the device the privilege of 4K output through an HDMI connection.

As the Transformer branding implies, this tablet will have an optional keyboard dock that attaches to the tablet and turns it into a Android notebook of sorts. The dock itself is very similar to its previous-gen counterparts, but replaces the single USB 2.0 port for USB 3.0 and the SD card slot for SDXC. The dock also contains a secondary battery built in, juicing up the Transformer Pad's battery all the way to 17 hours of usage when docked, according to ASUS.

ASUS PadFone Infinity with Snapdragon 800 Benchmarks Leak

Many flagship smartphones released during the first half of 2013 were powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 processor, prior to the release of the much more powerful Snapdragon 800. Instead of waiting one year to release a new flagship to deploy the faster SoC, many OEMs seemed like they couldn't wait to release a Snapdragon 800-bearing flagship. Samsung promptly released an LTE-A capable Galaxy S4 variant with the Snapdragon 800, and Sony has released the 800-powered Xperia Z Ultra, and now ASUS is also apparently joining the Snapdragon 800 party. Recent leaks on popular graphics benchmark GFXBench's online database reveal a Snapdragon 800-bearing PadFone Infinity smartphone. 

The device is named "Asus T004 PadFone Infinity A86". The T004 and A86 designations must be device model numbers or something like that. The device runs on the MSM8974 chipset, which corresponds to a Snapdragon 800 model. The leaked device has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, like the current PadFone Infinity, and runs Android 4.2.2.

Just for a recap, the Snapdragon 800, Qualcomm's most powerful SoC, contains four Krait 400 cores clocked at up to roughly 2.3GHz, plus a groundbreaking Adreno 330 GPU and dual-channel DDR3L-1600 memory (12.8 GB/s max).

The benchmark scores for the leaked PadFone device are simply breathtaking. Don't think that the scores are bad just because they're behind the Snapdragon 800 Galaxy S4, as this S4 variant is in first place in GFXBench's database (Hell, it beats the Nvidia Shield). This new PadFone Infinity is also at the very top of the benchmark charts with almost identical scores to the Xperia Z Ultra. Considering that in the beginning of the year the fastest devices were achieving 12fps on the T-Rex HD test, it's impressive to see how Qualcomm is driving mobile performance forward (and you're hearing this from a Tegra fan), doubling the performance in just half a year. 23.1fps on the T-Rex test is a very impressive score. The device also rendered some impressive scores in the Egypt HD test, getting close to the vsync limit in the Onscreen test. Fill rate is also pretty impressive, beating the Nexus 10 and getting close to the iPad 4 (the PadFone Infinity needs just about half of what these devices need due to their higher resolutions). Triangle Throughput is also very good. Even though the PadFone Infinity (along with just about every other Android device) still pales compared to the iPad 4 in terms of Triangle Throughput, the Adreno 330 will almost definitely never be bottlenecked by that factor. 

Of course, all this information is to be taken with a grain of salt, as there is no way to confirm their validity. However, with the IFA event in Berlin just around the corner, it makes a lot of sense for ASUS to refresh their smartphone flagship at this time. I guess we'll have to wait until September 10 to find out whether this device is real.

Possible New ASUS Transformer Pad (2013) Benchmarks leak

One of the biggest sources of device leaks come from benchmark databases, and GFXBench's online database has just spilled the beans on an upcoming ASUS device running NVIDIA Tegra 4.

The unknown device's name only registers as "ASUS Eee Pad (Tegra 4, retina)". This is very odd, because the Eee Pad brand has vanished for over a year, as it was replaced by the Transformer Pad title. Now, I don't think a revival of the Eee Pad name is likely, so I assume we're dealing with a new Transformer Pad iteration here.

The leaked results point to a Eee Pad device, running Android 4.2.2, running on a 1.9GHz Tegra 4 processor and with a 2560 x 1600 display. That falls in line with the official specs of the upcoming 2013 Transformer Pad Infinity. The software build numbers (WW_epad-10.14.0.39.3) are in accordance with ASUS' usual firmware build numbers, which gives these results more authenticity. 

The device's performance is pretty much in line with what the Tegra 4 has produced so far. Analyzing the very shader intensive T-Rex HD tests, You can see that, while the Tegra 4 can't quite outperform the iPad 4, it gets extremely close to it, to an extent that the difference in framerate is negligible (granted, the iPad 4 is 10 months old now, and it still has the lead). An impressive feat is that, on the Onscreen test, the Tegra 4 can keep itself very close to the iPad 4 despite the fact that it's pushing about 1 million pixels more. The performance hit for all these pixels should be much larger, so something about the Tegra 4's architecture helps it scale performance well as resolution increases.

The Egypt HD test looks a bit worse for the Tegra 4. At normalized resolution, it can push a respectable 50 fps, but it's still about 5 fps behing the iPad 4, and in this test, the higher resolution seems to penalize the GPU more, as the gap increases to a 13 fps difference between the two. It can still push 30 fps though, which proves the Tegra 4 is capable of playing most mobile games at native resolution while keeping a fluent framerate.

Fill test was always Apple's forte and at the same time NVIDIA's achilles' heel, and while fill rate isn't as horrendous as it was on the Tegra 3, thanks to Tegra 4's dual-channel (finally) DDR3 memory subsystem, it's still significantly behind the iPad 4, and even the Nexus 10. 1130 MTexels/s is a decent score, but falls begin the iPad 4's 2089 MTexels/s capability. This could be especially a problem at this extremely high resolution. While Tegra 4's memory bandwidth should be enough for most games, even with its resolution, a few games could suffer slight performance hits due to limited memory bandwidth, but I think that's only to occur later in the future. 

Triangle throughput isn't bad in the Tegra 4, as it can keep up with the Mali-T604 in the Nexus 10 and the Adreno 320, but, again, this is another speciality of PowerVR GPUs, as the iPad 4 and its PowerVR SGX 554MP4 trumps anything Android-based in terms of triangle throughput. But still, there shouldn't be any bottlenecks caused by triangle throughput in this device. 

I would take this information with a grain of salt, as there is no way of confirming the validity of these results. However, the fact that the results seem to fall in line with other Tegra 4 devices, and the specs reported are in accordance with ASUS' upcoming Transformer Pad Infinity tablet (more info here), and the firmware naming scheme seems pretty real, add up to make a big chance of this being a real device, probably the new Infinity. The 10-incher Android tablet is expected to launch in this quarter, so these results might indicate it will launch very soon.

New ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity Announced At Computex 2013: 1600p Display and NVIDIA Tegra 4 on board

ASUS is announcing a wide variety of mobile devices at its Computex 2013 event, - innovative and quirky alike - together with its latest flagship 10-inch tablet, a refreshed version of the Transformer Pad Infinity. While it doesn't, so far, appear to bring any big change to the Transformer Pad line, and in fact is more of a refresh, as the new Transformer Pad Infinity brings with it a very competitive high-resolution display and what must be the fastest mobile SoC yet.

The new Infinity uses the same kind of display as the last-gen Infinity, that is, a bright Super IPS+ display, however, the new Infinity receives a significant bump in terms of resolution, as it has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 (vs the 1920 x 1200 of the "old" Infinity), and a pixel density of 299ppi (vs 224ppi in the old Infinity), which beats the 264ppi of the iPad 4 and is on par with the Nexus 10's display. There's no data to back this up right now, but based on previous Transformers with the same Super IPS+ display, the display will probably have the same excellent blacks, and also unsurpassed screen brightness which characterizes the Super IPS+ display, which results in very good contrast from these displays. However, ASUS' tablet displays tend to reproduce rather washed out colors. We can't be sure these characteristics of ASUS tablet displays will also be present on the new Infinity, but it's definitely a possibility. Like the old Infinity, the new version will also have its display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2.

It's clear now how tablet cameras are really not that important, since ASUS actually downgraded the camera from the old Infinity to the new one (8MP vs 5MP), hence (almost) all modern tablets have 5MP cameras, which only shows how tablets, especially 10-inch ones, aren't adequate for taking pictures and videos.

One very interesting aspect of the new Transformer Pad Infinity is its internals. In fact, it is one of the first devices to use NVIDIA's powerful Tegra 4 System-on-Chip. Basically, it is an SoC built on power efficient 28nm process, which supports an optional Icera 3G/4G modem (hence, we may see an LTE variant of the Infinity). The SoC itself consists of four powerful Cortex A15 cores ticking at 1.9GHz, with an additional low frequency Cortex A15 core for handling light workloads with very little power consumption, with a 2 GB of RAM memory and a memory interface of 32-bit dual-channel DDR3-1899 (17.1 GB/s) and a whopping 72-core GPU. Thanks to the powerful GPU and outstanding memory bandwidth, the Infinity will fare very well with complex 3D games despite its mind blowing resolution.

Last but not least, the new Transformer Pad Infinity, much like every Transformer device preceding it, will have an optional keyboard dock that essentially turns the device into an Android Ultrabook, plus enhances connectivity and battery life. In fact, Pad + Dock combined will have a total battery capacity of 18,000 mAh; much more than the iPad 4's 11,000 (ish) mAh battery.

The Transformer Pad Infinity will be released in the coming months (no specific dates were given though), and so far is confirmed to ship with 32 GB of storage (a 64 GB version is likely to be released too). Pricing is still unknown but the 32 GB version will probably cost $499, corresponding to the last gen Infinity and competitive with other tablets. On paper, the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity looks like it will place itself ahead of the current top tablets (specifically, the iPad 4 and the Google Nexus 10), or will at least be on par with them, in terms of display, design, performance, etc.