Time for some good old fashioned corporate banter between two leading hardware makers! Since the very early days, Nvidia and Qualcomm have been at war with each other for ARM processor supremacy in tablets and smartphones.
But now Windows powered slates are the newest battleground for both companies.
Microsoft recently started shipping its second generation Surface 2 tablets, coincidentally around the same time Nokia unveiled its first ever slate, the Lumia 2520. One is an anticipated refresh, and the other is a long awaited device — but both are targeting the same Windows RT 8.1 user base.
While there are notable differences in both devices, the biggest one perhaps is the underlying processing hardware of both tablets. Microsoft went for the Nvidia Tegra 4, while Nokia partnered with Qualcomm to bring its tablet to life.
But according to SVP of Product Management at Qualcomm, Raj Talluri, when it comes to performance and feature set, there is actually no contest between the two tablets.
In an interview with CNET, the executive said:
“The performance on the 2520 is brilliant. It’s really at the next level. It’s not even really a contest. In every area, it’s much bigger, faster and lower power.”
Talluri considers the Lumia a better offering, for obvious reasons.
Nokia has packaged in a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor. Microsoft, on the other hand, decided to go with a 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 4 into its Surface 2 tablet.
And while both tablets have their advantages, we will have to wait a while to see what sort of an advantage one has over the other in terms of processing and graphical prowess — Nokia has not yet provided complete details about the availability of the slate.
All Comments
I think this kind of talk is good even for products from the same company. It creates a buzz and makes people want to check out both products. I think Microsoft should be both lines going, then the trend might start that their products are so good their only competition is their own other products.
Agreed, that’s why I said, good old fashioned banter! 🙂 These days you only find shades of it with Nvidia and AMD fighting it out on the graphics card, whenever a new generation is around. Intel and AMD on the processors front, there is no match really.
And the mobile and tablet makers are usually busy counting the coins that they rarely bother. But for Microsoft this could be rather good, both tablets are evenly matched!
I don’t know about the Nokia tablet, but my Surface 2 is amazing!
I can imagine, congrats, man!
Don’t imagine, grab one 🙂