Samsung working on a 12.2-inch tablet for Q3 2013: Report

After reports indicating the possibility of Apple working on a 12.9-inch tablet, the latest buzz is around Samsung developing a 12.2-inch 7 inch tablet of its own.They'll sport a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels and will come with an S Pen stylus, which is usually bundled with devices under the Galaxy Note series. Samsung is likely to launch the tablet in the third quarter of 2013.

Previously, the same website had reported that Apple was working on a new larger iPad with a 12.9-inch diagonal screen that would be called iPad Maxi. It had said that this iPad variant would launch in the first half of 2014 and would take on Ultrabooks. It would also target the educational market with digital textbooks. The website had cited industry sources to report that Apple was in talks with display and component manufacturers in Korea for supplies for this tablet.

While Samsung offers devices across all sizes with its tablets coming in 7-inch, 8-inch and 10-inch screen form factors, Apple only offers the iPad in 10 inch tablets and the iPad mini in 7.9-inch screen sizes. Considering that portable laptops start with 11-inch screens and offer a more complete computing experience as they come with a keyboard, we're not sure if going above the 10-inch screen size would help companies bring new customers with jumbo sized tablets. The laptops and Ultrabooks also offer a desktop OS and more connectivity ports. On the other hand tablets are limited in this aspect but focus more on portability. Perhaps these tablets will target niche markets including the educational market and design professionals.

Acer's trying to confuse us: they call the new Acer Aspire P3 an Ultrabook when it's actually a Windows 8 tablet with a keyboard case. In fact, they've switched from the Iconia 8 inch tablet branding to the Aspire notebook brand, yet the Aspire P3 is the near clone of the Acer Iconia W700 11.6" Windows 8 tablet. The Aspire P3 runs Windows 8 64 bit on a 1.5GHz Intel Core i5-3339Y dual core CPU and it has a 1366 x 768 IPS multi-touch display. Inside you'll find 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM and a 120 gig SSD drive. Like Microsoft Surface and Acer's own W700, it has Ultrabook internals. It can easily handle MS Office, web, streaming video and photo editing.

Acer includes a keyboard case that's reminiscent of the more robust models available for the iPad. It has a Bluetooth keyboard and black faux leather backing that's attractive. The tablet snaps into the back section of the case but there's no release lever, so it takes a bit of fiddling and prying to get it out, not unlike hard plastic smartphone cases that wrap around the sides. The tablet and case together weigh 3 pounds, and the tablet alone weighs 1.74 pounds, which is a bit lighter than the 2.1 pound Acer W700.

The tablet has an aluminum casing and it's hard to tell apart from the W700. It's a clean, straight-sided design and despite the slim design metal casing it doesn't get unbearably hot. It has a single USB 3.0 port, 3.5mm audio and micro HDMI but no SD card slot. It has a front 720p webcam and a passable rear 5MP camera with no flash.

This is one of the first Intel Y series CPUs we've tested in a product. This tablets for sale is a late third generation Ivy Bridge CPU meant to bridge the gap with Haswell in terms of power consumption. It's intended particularly for tablets and it runs at 13W max vs. 17 for ULV Ultrabook CPUs like that used in the W700, Asus Zenbook Prime and Acer Aspire S7. It's designed to putter along at an even more power frugal 7W. As you might expect, performance is thus slightly lower, and our model scored 3954 on PCMark 7 vs. 4357 on our 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U Iconia W700. Still, it's responsive enough and is easily 4 to 5 times faster than today's Intel Atom Windows 8 tablets.