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We’ve been tracking a duo of tablets known only as ‘Flapjack‘ up to this point, but we know a few things about them that make for a duo of compelling entries into the Chrome OS ecosystem. 8-inch and 10-inch tablets with the latest MediaTek 8183 processors, 16:10 FHD screens, and wireless charging make for very interesting packages, and we’re ready to see a few new entrants in the Chrome OS tablet game.
With the Snapdragon 845 Chromebooks/Tablets slated to begin arriving in the second half of 2019, other manufacturers hoping to snag a piece of the Chrome Tablet pie need to move quickly. Right now, we only have the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 (with similar variants from ASUS and CTL), Pixel Slate, and HP Chromebook x2 to compete with, but the arrival of Snapdragon Chromebooks in the coming months could make life tough for any other chipset trying to establish a foothold in this space.
ARM chips from MediaTek and Rockchip are honestly better suited for tablet-type work with their long battery life, low thermal ratings, and solid Android app performance. The main problem is both of the ARM offerings currently available have been pretty under-powered and have made the user experience poor because of it.
With MediaTek’s new 8183 chip, we’re seeing multi-core scores on par with the Snapdragon 835 and overall performance matching what we see in the newly-released Pixel 3a. How that all translates to Chrome OS is yet to be seen, but ‘Flapjack’ and it’s MediaTek 8183 processor could perform very well, deliver great battery life, and give us a few more Chrome OS tablets to choose from in the near future.
I say near future because we just found 4 new Geekbench entries from yesterday and today showing a device named Flapjack running a MT8183 in the wild. While these tests don’t necessarily confirm any particular time frame for arrival, they certainly do fall into a pattern we’ve seen from many Chromebook releases. When Geekbench results start showing up, device announcements are usually not far behind.
While we’re still unsure who these tablets belong to, we’re feeling quite sure that we may see them finally break cover sooner than later. I, for one, am excited. I’ve long wondered what running Chrome OS on a small, 8-inch tablet like an iPad Mini would be like. Looks like I won’t have to wait too much longer to find out.
