ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime & NVIDIA Tegra 3 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 1, 2011 1:00 AM ESTCamera Quality
Over the past couple of years of reviewing ARM based tablets, I've really never wanted to use any of them to take photos with. I see it happen from time to time and I can definitely see the use when making video calls, but otherwise it's just not that big of a deal to me. I use my smartphone far more frequently to take photos. Despite this being the case, ASUS has improved image quality out of both the front and rear-facing cameras in the Prime.
The rear sensor is now 8MP while the front is 1.2MP. I didn't have too much time to do a deep investigation here, but capture quality is much improved over the original Transformer:
TF Original, Rear Camera
TF Prime, Rear Camera
The rear camera shoots stills at 3264 x 2448 and produces JPGs that are typically around 2.4MB in size. The time between the first tap and capture of a still is under 2 seconds. The rear sensor can shoot 1080p video as well.
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metafor - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
1. The advantages of a companion core apply just as much to single, dual or quad core systems. In each case, individual cores can be power-gated. The companion core is there to provide lower idle power even beyond a single core. So no, going with a dual-core doesn't somehow make a companion core less necessary.2. A15 is huge compared to A9. Huge. Both in area and power. If anything, an A15 SoC needs a companion core even more than anything based on A9.
3. Because A15 is huge, a quad-core in a smartphone form factor isn't very feasible at 32nm. Nor is quad-core really all that useful for the vast majority of use-cases anyway. Especially since A15 performs so much better per-core than an A9.
phantom505 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Yeah, who can put up with a mere 9 hours of continuous playback. It's so bad....Oh wait...
medi01 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
iPad 25 Wh battery.Galaxy Tab 14.8 Wh battery.
;)
thunng8 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Why are you comparing the ipad to the 7" Galaxy tab? Of course the ipad will have a bigger battery.quiksilvr - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
I was actually surprised too. To be fair, the A5 chip is huuuuge in the iPad, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still beating a quad core setup.My guess is ICS will optimize quad core capabilities more and we'll be seeing a very different picture once that is released.
So I say wait for ICS and then pass judgement.
vision33r - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
How is it a surprise? Core i5 can match up against Core i7 in 95% if apps without needing the extra cores.In real world test, the difference between Core i5 and i7 performance is hardly measurable.
name99 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Of course by the time ICS is actually available on these sorts of devices, iPad3 with A6 will probably be out...Point is: a "my vaporware can beat up your vaporware" contest is generally not very enlightening to anyone.
daveloft - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
It has nothing to do with the CPU, it's all about the GPU.medi01 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Yeah, iPad wins hands down and it's very practical too.Think about encoding video in a browser using javascript, for instance
metafor - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
I think a lot of people (including myself) go with Android because we like the additional features provided by the OS -- true multitasking, choice of a plethora of browsers, third party players, no iTunes, Google integration, etc.But yes, iPad 2 has been king of both performance and battery life for a while now.