Finally, we have another next-gen MediaTek MT8188 Chromebook tablet on the way

Of all the hardware on the horizon both in and out of the Chromebook world, I can say without doubt that the devices I’m most excited for and most interested in are the Chromebook tablets that will house the upcoming MediaTek MT8188 SoC inside. Though we don’t have an official name for this new Chromebook processor just yet (hopefully that announcement comes soon), we know a bit about it and what sort of power it should ship with just a bit down the road.

MediaTek MT8188 for Chromebook tablets

We’ve covered this before, but here’s a quick rundown on the MediaTek MT8188. It is a chip that will be between the high-end Kompanio 1380 and the mid-range Kompanio 820. It shares a core lineup similar to the more-powerful Kompanio 1380, but swaps some of the bigger cores for smaller ones. To give you the nuts and bolts, I’ll simply quote one of my favorite authors:

However, when we dig in and look at the core layout, it becomes clear that this is a much more powerful SoC than the existing Kompanio 820/828. Mainly, that is due to the larger cores getting an upgrade to the same Cortex-A78 cores as we see in the Kompanio 1200/1380. Granted, there are only two of them versus the 4 in those other higher-end SoCs, but along with the 6 Cortex-A55 cores on board, this chip should be capable of some impressive performance and incredibly solid battery life.

Robby Payne – Chrome Unboxed

‘Geralt’ – what we know so far

With a processor like this, ‘Geralt’ becomes quite interesting. While it won’t have quite the raw power of the Acer Chromebook Spin 513, it will be in the ballpark. But that slight decrease in speed means an increase in battery life, so we could see an SoC here that is the best of both worlds: performance akin to the Kompanio 1380/1200 and battery life closer to the legendary Kompanio 828 in the Acer Chromebook 514.

We have also uncovered the fact that ‘Geralt’ is being tested with some solid camera sensors, has support for hi-resolution screens, is being tested with a couple different high-quality display panels, and looks likely to give us at least a new version of both the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 and Duet 5. I’ll be honest, if it only ends up spawning MT8188 versions of those two fantastic tablets, I’ll be incredibly happy. But I do hope a few more options come from ‘Geralt’ for sure.

‘Ciri’ is the latest addition

And that brings us to today’s news. Since finding ‘Geralt’ and following it for months at this point, I’ve been patiently waiting for the first of what I hope to be many baseboards that will come from this reference device. As it tends to go, the main development board never becomes an actual device, so the offspring of that main board are the ones we need to really pay attention to. And up until today, there have been none of those boards to talk about.

This is usually the case with MediaTek-powered devices, however, and I knew that we wouldn’t begin seeing sub-boards until we were a bit closer to one of these devices actually showing up and being announced. Though we have a new board based on ‘Geralt’ to discuss today, that doesn’t mean we’re going to get a product launch in the next few weeks; but I’d expect to see one in the next few months for sure.

For now, say hello to ‘Ciri’ – the first board derived from ‘Geralt’ and a device you can bet I’ll be keeping a very, very close eye on. At this point, there is literally nothing else in the Chromium Repositories about this board, but it’s early. This single commit has no clues as to who is behind the device, no indication of what size it will be, and no references to anyone outside of Google. But that will change over the coming weeks, and I’m very hopeful to get more details for ‘Ciri’ in the near future.

While I fully expect a couple new Lenovo tablets from this work to emerge, I’m also hopeful that maybe HP is considering a reboot of their nearly-great HP x2 11 tablet. They wouldn’t need to change much if they replaced the slow Snapdragon 7c Gen 1 SoC with this new MediaTek MT8188, and I think they could have some fantastic success if they tried. I’d also love to see ASUS give the detachable form factor another go and perhaps see Acer give it a swing, too.

Chromebook tablets have so much potential that has yet to be reached, and most of that comes down to the processor under the hood. With the new MediaTek MT8188, we may finally get to see what some of this great hardware is truly capable of when there’s a proper SoC moving things along. With Android apps, web apps, and a full-blown desktop, I think there’s a future where ChromeOS tablets are not a side show in the Chromebook market, and ‘Ciri’ is the first step in that direction. Stay tuned for more!