Dell Stack - Should Partners build an Intel based Smartphone ?
On November 8, Elan Blass of Venture Beat authored an article discussing a Dell/Intel internal program called Stack that investigated the use of Intel Kaby Lake m series CPUs as the basis for a new tablet/smartphone platform.
According to Mr Blass, the potential 1st generation device morphed from a 6.4" handheld to a 7" tablet with 4/8Gb of RAM and 128/256GB of Storage with SD expansion. A second generation device was also mentioned that would shrink the package to a 6" phablet smartphone. So the elusive x86 based Windows Phone.
With the focus being Windows 10 the device would support all the latest features, such as Continuum as well as Windows Hello and Ink. So similar to the design concept behind the HP Elite X3 - a highly portable compute device that would allow you to change it's use case based on using Continuum to change the screen.
In some ways the initial design kind of sounds like the next generation Venue Pro. I own one of the original Venue 8 Pro tablets based on the Intel Atom CPU line which Intel discontinued early in 2016.
I like my Venue 8 Pro and outside of the horrible pen functionality, has run both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 fine including the latest Redstone 2 branch builds, albeit with some limited functionality since it does not have the hardware capability to support Continuum or Hello.
But the Venue 8 also had poor battery life. My Venue 8 Pro ran an Atom Z3740D that has a TDP of 2.2W and would rarely last more than 3 or 4 hours on a charge and that was in airplane mode - so Wifi/BT off. If I was lucky I could watch an entire movie but not much more.
And while it was cool that I could run full Windows 10, Office, Chrome, etc on an 8" tablet - it was still more of an augmentation device than something I could rely on as my "daily driver".
The new Intel Kaby Lake m3-7Y30 CPU actually draws 3.5W in non-docked mode - so any design would need to address the increased draw especially considering that my Venue 8 Pro had a 1280x800 screen and the new m3-7Y30 for example has a max DP for integrated screens of 3840x2160.
As I've discussed in previous posts - Microsoft has been working on this vision of a single device to support corporate users. This device would have to support both Smartphone and PC use cases. It would need the portability and mobility of a smartphone - so LTE support AND be powerful enough to run both new UWP and Legacy apps, potentially locally.
One of the key technologies that MS is promoting for this new paradigm is Continuum. So the ability to dock or cast the screen from the device to a full size monitor or larger portable device like a tablet / laptop.
The first cut at this vision is the HP Elite X3 smartphone. The X3 is by far the most powerful smartphone device that has ever run Windows 10 Mobile and does have dock and cast Continuum capabilities.
But the challenge is the last part of the design vision and that is supporting legacy apps - potentially locally. Windows 10 Mobile does not support legacy 32 bit apps on ARM CPUs and even with the Centennial Program to accelerate their migration has not really caught on.
HP's interim answer to this challenge is VDI. The X3 comes bundled with HP's VDI Client and they promote their VDI solutions along with the device. And while VDI has become a very popular approach for many corporate customers to manage applications and deliver them to multiple platforms, it is also an expensive and complex solution. Ask any IT organization that has gone down this path at scale.
A better solution would be to have that same smartphone running an x86 CPU like the new m3-7Y30 running Windows 10 PC that would also support the dock, cast use case models AND run the legacy apps.
But even then, the challenge is that many ISVs have already developed their apps for "ARM" support running on iOS and Android and have no plans to support Windows 10 Mobile or PC. They don't see the need to support that market.
As Mr Blass mentioned in his article, the Dell Stack program in an an "unknown state" and so may never see the light of day. And while I like the potential of a new generation Venue Pro tablet that can support new Windows 10 capabilities like Windows Hello and Continuum along with all new new Ink capabilities and even LTE connectivity, the reality is that unless Dell/Intel can address the power situation and provide all day battery life, then this is just a design exercise.
Intel still has a ways to go to catch up to the power efficient ARM based SoCs being developed by Qualcomm and others.
Similarly, while MS has stated their commitment to Windows on ARM based CPU, Windows 10 Mobile simply does not provide the capabilities to allow them to fulfill their single device vision.
According to Mr Blass, the potential 1st generation device morphed from a 6.4" handheld to a 7" tablet with 4/8Gb of RAM and 128/256GB of Storage with SD expansion. A second generation device was also mentioned that would shrink the package to a 6" phablet smartphone. So the elusive x86 based Windows Phone.
With the focus being Windows 10 the device would support all the latest features, such as Continuum as well as Windows Hello and Ink. So similar to the design concept behind the HP Elite X3 - a highly portable compute device that would allow you to change it's use case based on using Continuum to change the screen.
In some ways the initial design kind of sounds like the next generation Venue Pro. I own one of the original Venue 8 Pro tablets based on the Intel Atom CPU line which Intel discontinued early in 2016.
I like my Venue 8 Pro and outside of the horrible pen functionality, has run both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 fine including the latest Redstone 2 branch builds, albeit with some limited functionality since it does not have the hardware capability to support Continuum or Hello.
But the Venue 8 also had poor battery life. My Venue 8 Pro ran an Atom Z3740D that has a TDP of 2.2W and would rarely last more than 3 or 4 hours on a charge and that was in airplane mode - so Wifi/BT off. If I was lucky I could watch an entire movie but not much more.
And while it was cool that I could run full Windows 10, Office, Chrome, etc on an 8" tablet - it was still more of an augmentation device than something I could rely on as my "daily driver".
The new Intel Kaby Lake m3-7Y30 CPU actually draws 3.5W in non-docked mode - so any design would need to address the increased draw especially considering that my Venue 8 Pro had a 1280x800 screen and the new m3-7Y30 for example has a max DP for integrated screens of 3840x2160.
As I've discussed in previous posts - Microsoft has been working on this vision of a single device to support corporate users. This device would have to support both Smartphone and PC use cases. It would need the portability and mobility of a smartphone - so LTE support AND be powerful enough to run both new UWP and Legacy apps, potentially locally.
One of the key technologies that MS is promoting for this new paradigm is Continuum. So the ability to dock or cast the screen from the device to a full size monitor or larger portable device like a tablet / laptop.
The first cut at this vision is the HP Elite X3 smartphone. The X3 is by far the most powerful smartphone device that has ever run Windows 10 Mobile and does have dock and cast Continuum capabilities.
But the challenge is the last part of the design vision and that is supporting legacy apps - potentially locally. Windows 10 Mobile does not support legacy 32 bit apps on ARM CPUs and even with the Centennial Program to accelerate their migration has not really caught on.
HP's interim answer to this challenge is VDI. The X3 comes bundled with HP's VDI Client and they promote their VDI solutions along with the device. And while VDI has become a very popular approach for many corporate customers to manage applications and deliver them to multiple platforms, it is also an expensive and complex solution. Ask any IT organization that has gone down this path at scale.
A better solution would be to have that same smartphone running an x86 CPU like the new m3-7Y30 running Windows 10 PC that would also support the dock, cast use case models AND run the legacy apps.
But even then, the challenge is that many ISVs have already developed their apps for "ARM" support running on iOS and Android and have no plans to support Windows 10 Mobile or PC. They don't see the need to support that market.
As Mr Blass mentioned in his article, the Dell Stack program in an an "unknown state" and so may never see the light of day. And while I like the potential of a new generation Venue Pro tablet that can support new Windows 10 capabilities like Windows Hello and Continuum along with all new new Ink capabilities and even LTE connectivity, the reality is that unless Dell/Intel can address the power situation and provide all day battery life, then this is just a design exercise.
Intel still has a ways to go to catch up to the power efficient ARM based SoCs being developed by Qualcomm and others.
Similarly, while MS has stated their commitment to Windows on ARM based CPU, Windows 10 Mobile simply does not provide the capabilities to allow them to fulfill their single device vision.
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