Why aren't tablets faster than phones?

[johnny_boy]

It seems to me that there should be much faster fanless ARM tablets than currently on the market, given what they cram into a super slim phone like my Galaxy S3. So, why aren't there?

 

[shortylickens]

because of supply and demand and consumer trends. People would rather carry a phone than a tablet. Why do you think we've had exponential improvements in phone technology in just a 5 year period?

 

[Mopetar]

It seems to me that there should be much faster fanless ARM tablets than currently on the market, given what they cram into a super slim phone like my Galaxy S3. So, why aren't there?

Outside of Apple and now probably Amazon with the Fire and Google with the Nexus 7, most tablets haven't sold in the volumes necessary to support the production of more powerful ARM chips, so most tablets end up getting the same SoCs that are used in mobile phones. They might add a little extra power by increasing the clock rate, but that's about it.

 

[God Mode]

Because businesses want to make the most profit while investing the least amount of money. If people line up to buy everything you make why bother?

 

[johnny_boy]

Is another answer that OSes like Android simply odn't make good use of the additional hardware power? And that the battery usage/performance payoff wouldn't be worth it? Will Windows RT be better in this respect than Android? I mean, better at multithreading, etc?

 

[Dominato3r]

Is another answer that OSes like Android simply odn't make good use of the additional hardware power? And that the battery usage/performance payoff wouldn't be worth it? Will Windows RT be better in this respect than Android? I mean, better at multithreading, etc?

Nobody has actually had any meaningful time with Windows RT. Windows 8 on the other hand, which runs on x86 chips, preforms well when dealing with things most people take for granted. Connected stand-by, instant on, fast boot times, long battery life (double digit percentage increases over Windows 7 on same hardware). Things we typically don't expect from Windows.

There's a neat video by Nvidia where they've got the full PC version of the unreal engine running on a Tegra 3 with Windows RT. I don't know how different that is from what's currently going on in mobile gaming, but it looks really slick.

 

[BladeVenom]

Why do you think we've had exponential improvements in phone technology in just a 5 year period?

Moore's law.

 

[Mopetar]

Is another answer that OSes like Android simply odn't make good use of the additional hardware power?

Not really. Android has gotten a lot better as the underlying hardware has improved, so I don't think it's correct to say that it doesn't scale well. However, outside of games (and really, many of the most popular iOS/Android games don't need that much processing power either), there really aren't a lot of tablets apps that need a lot of processing power.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Maybe battery concerns? Tablets have larger displays, so need more battery power to run those displays. Adding a higher wattage ARM processor consuming even more power, the battery would have to get bigger, the tablet gets heavier, and it's starts becoming unattractive.

 

[johnny_boy]

Not really. Android has gotten a lot better as the underlying hardware has improved, so I don't think it's correct to say that it doesn't scale well. However, outside of games (and really, many of the most popular iOS/Android games don't need that much processing power either), there really aren't a lot of tablets apps that need a lot of processing power.

Sorry, that's what I had intended to say actually--Android software, not the OS, makes poor use of the additional power. I guess part of the problem is also that there is barely any differentiation between tablet/phone apps since there are barely any tablet-specific apps.