Dell Venue 8 7000, "World's Thinnest Tablet" With Intel Moorefield Atom Reviewed 120
MojoKid (1002251) writes "Dell recently launched their Android-based Venue 8 7000 slate, claiming it's the "world's thinnest" tablet. It measures a mere 6 millimeters thick, or 0.24 inches and change. That's 0.1mm slimmer than Apple's iPad Air 2 and 1.5mm flatter than the iPad mini 3, giving Dell full bragging rights, even if by a hair. Dell also opted for an Intel Atom Z3580 processor under the hood, clocked at up to 2.3GHz. This quad-core part is built on Intel's 22nm Moorefield microarchitecture. Compared to its Bay Trail predecessor, Moorefield comes in a smaller package with superior thermal attributes, as well as better graphics performance, courtesy of its PowerVR G6430 graphics core. The Venue 8 7000 also features one of the best 8-inch OLED displays on the market, with edge-to-edge glass and a 2560x1600 resolution. Finally, the Venue 8 7000 is also the first to integrate Intel's RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera, which offers interesting re-focusing and stereoscopic effects, with potentially other, more interesting use cases down the road. Performance-wise, the Venue 8 7000 is solid enough though not a speedster, putting out metrics in the benchmarks that place it in the middle of the pack of premium tablets on the market currently."
Sounds fancy! (Score:2)
Lots of superlatives there, but does it play flappy bird?
Needs a Sammich (Score:1)
90% of the space in a modern tablet is the battery, a thin tablet is like an anorexic supermodel, really needs a bit of beef on the bones or it likely to feint after a few minutes work.
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That's the reason fashion runways are getting shorter every year.
Re:Needs a Sammich (Score:5, Funny)
That's why you always aim for the belt buckle.
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i'd rather have a tablet that doesn't look like it was designed by an "equal opportunities" employee.
to give an obligatory car analogy:
nobody cares what's under the hood of "kia soul" or "fiat multipla".
Outsourced headlines? (Score:1)
"Word's Thinnest Tablet" - has slashdot joined the mainstream media?
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Well, at least we know it can run Microsoft Word.
0.1mm (Score:3)
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Is it even noticeable without a precision caliber?
When buying tablets, I always bring a set good to .001, a fraction of a mm makes a significant difference in consumer purchasing decisions.
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Devices are now thin enough that it's only a pissing contest at this point.
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Not completely, IMHO... With expensive kit like this I think that starting with a thin case is necessary to allow for the bulk of the protective case. Imagine a Surface Pro with 3 or 4 mm more - way too fat.
Re:0.1mm (Score:4, Insightful)
A thicker device would be sturdier and have room for a bigger battery.
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Which is not in manufacturers' interests. Frequent replacements FTW.
Pissing contest...? (Score:2)
Devices are now thin enough that it's only a pissing contest at this point.
Devices are now even thinner than a stream of piss...!
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It's the worlds most bizarre dick measuring contest. Why can have the smallest, weakest erection that is most prone to bending and only lasts for about 2 minutes.
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It's a mechanical device strapped around the heads of pedants to measure their worth to humanity.
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2560x1600 (Score:2)
So I could replace the screen on my laptop with this tablet and get a better resolution and the screen could run a native X server with a little prodding?
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Don't try to run X on a PowerVR GPU - though perhaps you could run Mir or Wayland and then XMir or XWayland on top.
For running Xorg on a tablet chip, bet on Intel graphics or nvidia graphics, everything else may not work or be a third class citizen. (AMD graphics will do when AMD chips will be found in tablets)
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Good Grief (Score:2)
I understand that thin equals lighter, and so for a laptop or tablet, there is some advantage, but I wonder if this "thinnest whatever" craze is useful after a certain point? How do these "paper thin" devices feel in the hand? Are they so susceptible to damage that you need to buy a case anyway? What about the internals? Heat kills electronics... Sure, "thin is sexy", but I want something that feels good in the hands, is light but not feather light, and doesn't burn my nuts if I leave it on my lap too long.
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They aren't paper thin. We still have a long way to go. I wouldn't mind having a phone as thin and light as a credit card. Then it would feel like a... credit card, which you know, feels fine in my hand.
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I wouldn't mind having a phone as thin and light as a credit card. Then it would feel like a... credit card, which you know, feels fine in my hand.
Until you sit on it, forget it's there and run it through the was, or leave it on a pile of paper on your desk that later gets shredded...
Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't mind having a phone as thin and light as a credit card. Then it would feel like a... credit card, which you know, feels fine in my hand.
Until you sit on it, forget it's there and run it through the was, or leave it on a pile of paper on your desk that later gets shredded...
Funnily enough similar arguments were made against VLSI microprocessors in the days of mainframes. What if I left my computer in my pants pocket and it got washed?
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Just like the MHz/GHz war gave us the Pentium 4 focusing on one trait (even if it's mostly for marketing) at the expense of all others leads to a product that is less than optimal. Keep the thickness as low with the internals as possible, but for the love of god slap a manly battery onto it. Make a tablet that can run without being recharged for a week. Even if that leads to a tablet that's a a few mm thicker.
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The irony with Intel's gaming of marketing was that it was actually AMD who broke 1 GHz.
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How do these "paper thin" devices feel in the hand?
I already find my iPad Mini quite uncomfortable to hold for any length of time. It's too thin.
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I sort-of lust after a Mac Book, but my ThinkPad is substantial enough that I don't worry about breaking it just by looking at it
Don't worry about that. The "unibodies" of MacBooks (both Pro and Air) are CNC machined out of solid billets of aluminum. They are quite robust, despite their thickness.
Where I complain about excessive thinness is in cellphones. I wish Apple would stop making iPhones thinner, and just use any extra space for the battery.
Bend ? (Score:5, Funny)
But will it bend ?
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Shirley you mean, "Will it blend?"
You mean will it slice, dice, and chop?
I want to use my tablet as a knife.
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The moment he hits the tablet against the blender, the (plastic) Nexus 7 and Kindle bend and bounce back close to their original shape. The much thinner (metal) iPad Mini instantly suffers permanent deformation.
Weight (Score:2)
Thickness is a useless criterion for judging tablets unless there are drastic differences like a tablet being a half inch thick. What makes more sense is to compare relative tablet weight.
Dell Venue 8 7000? (Score:3)
Who the hell decided to call something "Dell Venue 8 7000"? You don't put two numbers one after another, it's just stupid!
Time to fire the marketing guys!
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Who the hell decided to call something "Dell Venue 8 7000"? You don't put two numbers one after another, it's just stupid!
Time to fire the marketing guys!
You're posting about it, so I guess the marketing guys earned their pay on this one. Sure, you can say, "but, but I'm pointing out how stupid that is!"
Makes no difference; you already made the contribution that they wanted from you. For free.
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I just said their product has a stupid name, I don't see that as a positive. The marketing guys can go fuck themselves.
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New Coke, Thalidomide, The Aztek, Ahh, the PCjr
If any and all buzz is good buzz, they'd have done great.
Do you figure that the GoDaddy superbowl commercial (pulled before the SB) about the puppy who makes an epic journey home to find that his oweners were glad because they just sold him using a Godaddy webpage was good publicity? Because by golly, they had a lot of people talking about it.
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Re:Dell Venue 14 2003 (Score:3)
No, the name is totally forgettable and fucking hard to differentiate on Dell's website, leading me to purchase another device from another vendor because then I can be certain of what I'm getting.
It's like Sony's laptops, where I can't tell the difference between the WXCa, the WXC, the WYCa, the WYCd and the WXYC and I have to go to a different fucking website to buy each of them. Or just go and buy a laptop from someone that wants me to buy one I want, not whatever wank marketing gimmick they're trying to
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And the beat goes on...
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Because you keep harping on the same one point. You seem to buy into the marketing theory that any publicity is good publicity. I don't, and from observation it doesn't really appear that many businesses do either, otherwise "damage control" wouldn't exist.
Dell undoubtedly wants people posting stuff about the 8 700, but they probably don't want people posting that it's a stupid name. If they thought that was a good thing they'd go for the gold and call it the Dell Up Uranus.
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Yowza!
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I'm participating in the marketing? How, exactly?
I understand the point you're failing to make, but you're failing to make it. Step up your persuasion, possibly with evidential logic based reasoning.
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What's that thing called again?
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I can't remember. It's made by Dell, but I already knew they made attractively priced but ultimately unsatisfying hardware, and unattractively priced but ultimately reasonable spec gaming hardware.
Who are you?
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It's called the Dell Avenue 42 over 9000 mark III rev 4.14, second edition.
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Go ahead, keep denying it, this is a hoot!
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The campaign, for what exactly?
You keep hooting, it's a good audible warning for the rest of us to stay clear.
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But it's clear you can't admit you're just like the rest of us. I love twonking retards like you.
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Stay dumb, bro.
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Now *you* are participating in Dell's marketing. Whether you like or will remember the name yourself is irrelevant, I'm pointing out that the GGP is participating in spreading the name. Why is it so hard for people to understand more than one point about an issue?
Because you lump all buzz with good buzz. It's a pointless argument, mere noise, because the point of marketing is to get you to buy the darn thing, not sit somewhere and type about it.
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I'd have thought geeks would love Sony's naming scheme. Maybe it's the way that their US website presents the information.
Japanese manufacturers tend to have quite nice model naming systems. They usually use a product-option-colour system, a bit like the major-minor-patch system for numbering software. They also come up with amazing sub-brands that tragically rarely make it to the west. Panasonic Doltz toothbrush anyone? Lam-Dash razor perhaps? How about a Hitachi Wooo TV?
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Not just the sub-brands. My Zojirushi rice cooker is fantastic.
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The name had washed over me completely when I read TFS. Not only the name, but the fact that we were talking about a Dell device. This thread has now set the name in my head.
There you go, and you can thank the folks I responded to for helping to set the hook.
I don't make the rules, I just make fun of them.
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I disagree. By continuing the discussion (both you and I are doing it with these very posts), he does participate in the marketing of the name. And so are we. The only way to avoid that is to not comment. But feel free to continue supporting their marketing of the PC.
So what you are saying is that if say, the thing had awful battery life, and we commented on it, we'd be doing Dell a favor? The marketing guys and gals would bask in the glow of knowing they had done their jobs, and give the battery design team all raises because they generated buzz?
That marketing thing - I think a lot of people have it wrong.
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So what you are saying is that if say, the thing had awful battery life, and we commented on it, we'd be doing Dell a favor? The marketing guys and gals would bask in the glow of knowing they had done their jobs, and give the battery design team all raises because they generated buzz?
Names are not functions, or the awfully named iPad would never have caught on. Try to tell the difference between one thing and another - it will really help you exist in this world.
I am gratified that this so tweaks you that you felt you had to respond to three of my posts.
I have no such interest in you. Fare thee well.
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I am gratified that this so tweaks you that you felt you had to respond to three of my posts.
I have no such interest in you. Fare thee well.
Your concession noted.
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Who the hell decided to call something "Dell Venue 8 7000"? You don't put two numbers one after another, it's just stupid!
Time to fire the marketing guys!
Sounds like an old phone number. Like buying a Dell Pennsylvania 6-5000.
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Who the hell decided to call something "Dell Venue 8 7000"? You don't put two numbers one after another, it's just stupid!
You are REALLY a going to be unhappy in 6 months, when they release the Dell Venue 8 7000 2...
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You are REALLY a going to be unhappy in 6 months, when they release the Dell Venue 8 7000 2...
Best laugh I had all day! Thank you for that.
scrapware (Score:3)
What Good Is An Android Tablet with Intel inside? (Score:5, Interesting)
It gets blown away in terms of speed by ARM based tablets, not to mention how sadly it compares to an iPad Air 2, gets mediocre battery scores and doesn't have the legacy advantage it would have if it ran Windows.
I don't know that I've ever read a more forgiving review.
Re: What Good Is An Android Tablet with Intel insi (Score:1)
My Dell Venue 8 Pro runs full Windows 8.1 on an x86 processor. But Dell also makes a lower end Venue 8 tablet that runs Android.
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Choice of OS is irrelevant to Dell's web checkout business model. Common x86_64 hardware enables the following:
(1) System RAM
(a) 1 GB [ ] default
(b) 2 GB [X] add $25
(c) 4 GB [ ] add $50
(d) 8 GB [ ] add $75
(2) OS
(a) Android [X]
(b) Windows 10 [ ] add $50
(3) Storage
(a) 4GB eMMC [ ] (Android only)
(b) 64GB SSD [X] add $50
(c) 128GB SSD [ ] add $100
(d) 256GB SSD [ ] add $150
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Forgiving? Way way beyond forgiving IMO.
Comes with KitKat but they "trust" will be updated at some point in the future.
McAffee nags you to register every time you turn it on but it's an OEM favorite so they're not surprised to see it.
Takes 2-3 seconds to transition landscape-portrait/portrait-landscape but they "hope" Dell will address this in an update
The real sense cameras are useless other than in best lighting conditions but they're not a gimmick
Middle of the road performance - At launch. In 6 months th
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Erganomics (Score:2)
When I see a manufacturer touting a metric no one cares about the ads sound to me like "We can't compete so we're going to insult your intelligence instead."
"even if by a hair"? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, actually, 100 microns (0.1mm) is a reasonable diameter for a human hair. So, kudos for the phrasing!
Word's Thinnest? (Score:1)
Do the editors even proof-read their submissions before approval? Word's Thinnest? I think they meant "World's Thinnest".
wtf is kixer!? (Score:1)
Thanks slashdot for convincing me to slap an adblocker on my phone!
I like how difficult it is to touch that teeny "hide/change to survey" tab at the bottom too.
Looks like Dice is well on it's way to making this site look like a malware toilet bowl!
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I actually have ad block on my phone, but I had the 'allow unobtrusive ads' checked; but that stupid little tab at the bottom of /. this morning prompted me to uncheck it, which seems to have gotten rid of the ad for now... but I prefer browsing with 'allow unobtrusive ads'
But that ad wasn't unobtrusive. It was animated, and it wouldn't scroll away (fixed to screen coordinates)... those are the definition of OBTRUSIVE.
soylentnews is supposed to be /. without Dice's nonsense... its getting ever more tempting
Because.... (Score:2)
....millions of people have been saying - I wish my tablet was thinner.
Funniest part of the review (Score:3)
It mentions in a couple places that the tablet ships with Android 4.4, and Dell hasn't said when it's getting 5.0. But they "have a feeling" Dell will be doing so soon!
Because companies have such a stellar track record of providing Android updates for released hardware...
Ten minutes of battery life? (Score:1)
Well?
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Does it run Linux?
of course it does, it's Android, you clown.
Ew, PowerVR (Score:2)
I'm not too impressed with the depth camera (Score:2)
If you watch the video review in the article, the gallery app has a measuring tool. The reviewer measures the height of the Golden Gate Bridge, oddly enough doesn't pick up on the fact that the app has claimed the bridge is 37ft tall.
According the google the bridge is 220ft. I'm not sure who should be more embarrassed Intel or the reviewer.
I'm not too impressed with the depth camera (Score:5, Informative)
The reviewer should be embarrassed, and so should you for not reading up on RealSense, but it's probably unintentional.
The error is because stereo depth accuracy is quadratic, it degrades as the square of the distance to the sensors. The distance (baseline) between the cameras in a RealSense unit is so small that any distance measured beyond a few metres is inaccurate. It was a stupid thing to demonstrate, but it shows that many reviewers (and users it seems) don't understand the limitations of 3D measurement systems. For this reason, Intel clearly states that RealSense is only good up to 10m (and even then I would be sceptical that it works well beyond 5).
This is easily verifiable with your eyes. As an object gets further away, it becomes harder and harder to determine its distance because the optical parallax of the object tends to zero (i.e. it appears in the same x-position on each of your 'sensors'). Try it next time you're in a car or on a train, we all know that nearby objects appear to whizz past while background features like mountains/hills remain stationary.
Specifically the error equation is dZ = Z^2/bf (the distance measurement is is Z = bf/d where d is the disparity (parallax) in pixels)
Where dZ is the distance error, Z is the target distance, b is the baseline and f is the focal length in pixels. I've assumed that you can detect correspondences to within one pixel, realistically it'll be better than that for a competent stereo matching algorithm. Now in this case Z is several hundred metres, b is order 100mm and f order 1000px.
Do the maths: 100^2/(100e-3 * 1000) = around 100m error. At 5m? It's around 25cm and 1m it's 1mm. The actual numbers will be different because I don't know the exact baseline, or the focal length. I can tell you for sure that the cameras aren't high enough resolution for that to make a significant difference to the accuracy.
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Kudos for the explanation, this is why I still come to slashdot.
I haven't spent much time looking, so this was the best I could find:
Dell also said accuracy will depend on how far away the object is. From 3 feet to 15 feet, it’s about 98 percent accurate. And from 15 feet to 20 feet its 90 to 93 percent. Beyond 20 feet, it’s too far away to be accurate at all.
The product page [intel.com] doesn't really make this clear at all, the only distance it ever metions is up to 30M and that's in relation to changing the focus.
I'm surprised they made it such a big feature given how limited it is. Might as well just estimate the distances yourself.
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Well for a stereo system you can't claim 98% accuracy between two distances! I found a presentation where the baseline is given as 75mm: https://intel.lanyonevents.com... [lanyonevents.com].
We still don't know what the cameras are, or the focal length, but I'm sure we'll find out eventually. For now we can use: relative accuracy = (Z/(75e-3*900). Note that 900 represents the minimum measurable disparity divided by the focal length in pixels. This turns out to be almost exactly right with respect to Dell's numbers.
So at 3 fe
please use a better review site (Score:3)
please stop with the hothardware reviews. Or at least go find a better site with up to date stuff. hell even the wall street journal reviewed Dell Venue a month before hothardware everyone else reviewed these 2 months ago.
Can it be rooted easily? (Score:3)
cat | ./post-to-slashdot END_OF_RANT
Can the bootloader be unlocked? It seems that any non-nexus devices can only be rooted through running some sort of security exploit against the running OS, which only gets you control over that OS and doesn't let you easily load a new OS.
I'd like to see a device where not only the bootloader is unlocked, but it lets you set your own signing key, re-lock it, and then only boot images you sign. I know this will not be the case for mainstream devices, but I hope there will be a market for such devices among the geek crowd.
END_OF_RANT
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As AC said, YES \o/
http://opensource.dell.com/rel... [dell.com]