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Acer Iconia W510 Tablet: A Tale Of Intel Vs. ARM And Acer Vs. Apple
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1. The Long Road Ahead: Two High-Profile Rivalries

This article was supposed to go live several months ago. Beyond measuring the power consumption of Intel's Clover Trail-based Atom Z2760 in ARM Vs. x86: The Secret Behind Intel Atom's Efficiency, we wanted to evaluate the Atom and Windows 8 user experience using Acer's Iconia W510 as our example. By the time we finished up, we had a whole new appreciation for how solid hardware and a well thought-out product are not necessarily tied together. Acer has a long road ahead.

We all love good stories about underdogs triumphing in the face of adversity. It’s the classic hero’s journey, from fictional characters like Rocky Balboa and Harry Potter to the real-life long-shots like the 1980 U.S. men's Olympic hockey team. When it comes to tablets and smartphones, Intel and Microsoft are the ones looking to claw their way into mobility. Here, ARM and its licensees (Qualcomm, Nvidia, TI, Apple, and so on) are the success story. ARM's architecture is the belle-of-the-ball, offering high efficiency and high-enough performance, while x86 is the step-sister, toiling away in the attic.

But when you hear those classic stories about triumphant underdogs, there's a simple truth: they're not about weaklings who topple invincible Goliaths. The dark horse was never weak in the first place. Instead, they toppled the favorite when a more formidable adversary failed to see talent that was there all along. To coaches like Herb Brooks, there was never any doubt that the Russians could be beaten.

These stories are few and far between though, which is why they're special. And often, calling someone or something an underdog is just a nice way to say hopelessly outclassed.

We're looking at two match-ups today: Intel versus ARM, and Acer versus Apple.

Is ARM the company challenging the Goliath Intel using a RISC architecture, validated by Steve Jobs' favor in the original iPhone? Or is Intel actually the underdog, a company that nobody believes can match great performance with comparable efficiency in an unforgiving power envelope?

And then there's Acer, a company most often associated with low-end PCs. Yet, with its Aspire S7, it created one of the market's best Ultrabooks. A decade ago, Samsung was the up-and-comer, contesting Sony in the consumer electronics space. Now who's on top? Ten years ago, Blackberry and the Palm Treo were king. So, does Acer have what it takes to truly challenge the colossus Apple?

We can begin to answer both questions by looking at Acer's Iconia W510. Why is this tablet, specifically, unique? Well, it represents a closer collaboration between Intel and an OEM than anything seen before. A number of the processor giant's top engineers spent months taking intercontinental trips to Taiwan to help Acer design the device, along with the W710 and S7 Ultrabooks. The Iconia W510 is not simply an Acer-developed piece of hardware, but rather the product of collaboration

Our story begins at Intel...

2. Improving Touch Performance With Windows 8 And Better SNR

Even as Android and Windows 8 grow in popularity, Apple's iPad still enjoys a majority of the tablet market. We've found the iPad to be smoother-feeling and more responsive than even the fastest competitors. And we are correct.

One of the first things Intel did was take stock of the tablet space to see how the most popular sellers performed. This had nothing to do with Jobs' Reality Distortion Field; Apple's iPad was truly faster to respond to touch input than the best Android-based models. Windows 7-based tablet's powered by Pine Trail? The worst of the bunch. 

To address this challenge, Intel's engineers approached it like NASA and the Apollo program. They couldn’t change their lot by targeting one specific component or element. Instead, they knew they needed to re-think and re-engineer the whole process, optimizing from the moment your finger hits the screen to the moment your task completes.

The first discovery was that Windows 7’s desktop- and workstation-oriented approach to multi-tasking meant that touch input was given the same priority in the execution stack as everything else. On a fast CPU, waiting for the time slice wasn’t a big deal. On a tablet with a low-power processor, this turned into lag and inconsistent responsiveness. Intel says it worked with Microsoft to create a "fast lane" for user input, so that touch would receive the highest priority. This was implemented in Windows 8, and is featured on all tablets and touch-enabled notebooks (including those running Windows RT). Not surprisingly, Windows 8-based machines seem much more responsive than the slates running Windows 7 we reviewed in the past.

Intel then studied the way gestures were recognized and discovered two interesting points. First, electromagnetic interference from the device's LCD was causing noise in most capacitive touch panels, resulting in a lower signal-to-noise ratio. A poor SNR turned into wasted processing cycles to extract legitimate signal from the noise. Working with OEMs, Intel claims it helped improve the analog signaling involved in touch-capable screens.

Though most mainstream folks believe that claims from audiophiles that cable quality is nothing but a voodoo science, techies know that there are times when cabling makes a measurable difference. It was definitely important to SCSI-based storage subsystems. Then, cables became an issue for 80-conductor IDE cables. Even today, a MacBook Pro can crash with a SATA 6Gb/s SSD unless its cable is also wrapped in aluminum foil for shielding. On a tablet, shielding touch sensors from the noisy LCD panel improved the analog signal-to-noise-ratio to such a degree that latency dropped and accuracy improved, yielding faster and more precise input. Acer is one of the first OEMs implementing Intel's technical contribution, and this is little-known feature of the Iconia W510, W710, and Aspire S7. Not all shipping tablets feature this tuning, but an increasing number of OEMs are joining Intel’s performance optimization program. As an analog technology, this can be applied to any touch-capable device. However, Intel is aggressively approaching OEMs manufacturing x86-based tablets and helping them improve this aspect of their technology.

3. Improving Touch Through Host-Based Acceleration

The next step that enhanced touch reliability and sensitivity involved Intel’s epiphany about gesture detection. Most gestures were picked up using the touch panel's USB controllers with dirt-cheap processor cores. Intel’s performance team developed a secret formula that allowed them to improve the software algorithm for both accuracy and speed by shifting some of the work to the host CPU. Shifting the workload, and then using more sophisticated software, became such a significant innovation that Intel chose not to patent it due to the disclosure requirement. Instead, the company elected to protect this the way Coca Cola's recipe is safeguarded: by keeping it fully secret.

This isn't smoke/mirrors and pure marketing. Under embargo, I spoke with the lead software engineer behind this advancement and discussed the technology behind Intel's optimizations. Nobody from PR was at that meeting to interfere, and I had sufficient information to evaluate and understand the pertinent principles. This one's real. I hate to ask you to "just trust us" on this one, but in this case, you sort of have to. I'm not a full-time programmer, but I still took first place in all of the computer science programming competitions held when I was at Stanford University, both involving fast algorithms and my day-to-day research involving computational biomechanics. So, it's not like Intel is pulling the wool over my eyes. More important, you don't have to take my word or Intel's blindly. You'll know as soon as you try one of these machines at a Microsoft Store.

Currently, this technology is present in the aforementioned systems. Intel is also working with the touchscreen chip manufacturers to ensure more tablets incorporate its advancement. Because the technology requires certain elements of the host processor, it can only be achieved using x86-based devices. Interestingly, even though platforms with ARM processors inside cannot benefit, AMD's x86 cores do gain from Intel's R&D. One of the first touch controller OEMs to license this tech is Elan, and you'll start seeing more x86-based machines with Elan's touch controller sporting Intel's optimizations. There's no easy way for you to identify the devices with performance-tuned touch software without doing some extra research, but we'll keep you updated as we review new tablets and touch-enabled notebooks.

Windows 8 Gesture Recognition Demo

Last, Intel had to optimize its CPU. One of the important factors required for a smooth user experience is a consistent 60 FPS. The company's engineers found that a memory controller optimized for smooth graphics scrolling was different than one optimized for SPEC benchmarks, particularly when a CPU and GPU share the same memory. In fact, it turned out that the best memory controller design for great benchmark numbers was the opposite of what was needed for real-world tasks like swiping across a screen. Do you shoot for a constant 60 FPS and optimal experience, or optimize for industry-standard benchmarks indicative of raw computation in heavy workloads? Intel showed that it was serious about the tablet and phone markets by making what I consider to me the only viable choice (and that's on a site proud of its benchmark-based conclusions). Most of the time, Atom processors go into consumer-oriented devices or micro-servers, rather than environments requiring heavy number crunching. So, the smart move is to optimize for Atom's target markets. Taking a hit on the synthetic benchmark scores, then, Intel went for the gain in usability. It thought like Steve Jobs back in '96 working on the original iPhone: user experience comes first.

Windows 8's software optimizations, Intel's R&D into touch panel optimization, its sharing of knowledge with OEMs like Acer for x86-based devices, and a different memory controller from previous-gen Atom processors mean that today's tablet- and phone-focused Atom SoCs are very different from the ones we poked fun at during the Windows 7 era. The branding is the same, but a system like Acer's W510 with Intel's Atom Z2760 is completely different from the old ExoPC with an Atom N450.The jump in responsiveness that an iPad offers over an Android-powered tablet is the same as what Acer's W510 gives you over an iPad. And Intel gets that performance from a standard PowerVR SGX545.

4. Acer's W510 In Practice

I was most impressed with the W510's battery life. It was no surprise that Intel wanted reviewers to use the W510 as their reference platform for Atom Z2760. Using a 720p-based video of the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover's landing animation playing in a continuous loop (at 100% brightness and 100% volume), I took a full-charged Canon EOS 5D Mark II in tethered mode (with no LCD review) and recorded a time-lapse video with one frame every 15 seconds. The camera ran out of batteries before the tablet, and I was able to get more than seven hours from the W510.

Acer Iconia W510 Battery Life Demo

We've seen this already, but Acer's W510 demonstrates again that x86 works for tablets. Beyond my seven-plus hours of video playback, I attached the optional keyboard dock and extended battery, and played a 1080p H.264-encoded video non-stop for 15 hours and 37 minutes.

Next, I took the W510 through a set of Web browsing benchmarks, where processor performance proved to be top-tier. There are large differences between IE10 and Chrome performance. Given full x86 support, it was trivial to try out different browsers (although the best user experience is with the IE10 Touch mode).

With Snapdragon 800 and Tegra 4 both around the corner, there's no doubt that Intel's Atom Z2760 will face fierce competition very soon. Still, though, Intel's touch optimizations and the Z2760's performance make basic Web-based functionality fluid on Acer's W510.

I have performance numbers for an overclocked six-core PC in there just to remind everyone that the death of the desktop is still a premature proclamation.

Reveling In x86 Compatibility

It goes without saying that support for traditionally desktop-oriented applications is a major advantage that Windows 8 enjoys over Android, iOS, and even Windows RT. There are two obvious wins that I encountered during my first week with the W510. The first was full Adobe Flash support. The second was TV shows only approved for Hulu desktop viewing were available to the W510, whereas they aren't for the Android and iOS platforms.

If you need the full Microsoft Office experience, and not just Office RT, you'll also appreciate x86 support. Windows RT's version of Office doesn't support macros or add-ins like Endnote, possibly the most popular plug-in for Office. Finally, you get HDMI and full USB support (although you need the included accessory cable to go from Mini-B to Type A connectors), making file transfers easier.

The Subjective Good: A High-Contrast IPS Screen

Acer arms the W510 with an IPS display. Apple's Retina screens and the Nexus 10's high-res panel both offer better resolution for photos. Moreover, Microsoft's Surface seems to have better contrast. But the W510 still looks good, supporting the argument that resolution alone does not dictate image quality.

So, we have a fast tablet with a sharp-looking display that's wonderfully responsive, great battery life, and full Windows 8 support. It's like a McLaren MP4-12C that doesn't ask you to choose between performance or comfort; you get both.

5. The Novelty Wears Off

Sounds like I really dig Acer's W510, right? Well, the novelty of a fast, functional, x86-based tablet quickly wore off. The device's fit and finish just isn't up to the iPad's standard. There is some creaking and flexing that goes on, and yet Acer asks a premium price. Build quality simply doesn't match.

The Atom's PowerVR SGX545 is great for Web browsing and most Windows 8 applications. Games like Armed (a great turn-based strategy title), Pinball FX, and Angry Birds Star Wars also run well. You can even run classic PC games like Sam & Max. Unfortunately, more graphics-intensive titles, such as Violet Storm (a game inspired by Geometry Wars) don't run properly. The SGX545 is incompatible with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, resulting in a crash. There is always this jarring sensation going from a very fast tablet under the Windows 8 UI to unusably-slow 3D apps. This breaks the "it just works" paradigm tied to Apple's products.

Windows 8 also proved to be disappointing. Now, I have Windows 8 installed on my primary laptop, my home desktop, and my primary workstation, none of which have a touchscreen. Although there's a rough learning curve tied to the new UI, Windows 8 is a faster and more responsive operating system, given the same hardware I was using to drive Windows 7. But even though Windows 8 was envisioned as a desktop and tablet OS, you can tell it's still a desktop environment with touch optimizations.

You can live in the new Windows 8 UI until you can't. For a power user like myself, bouncing back and forth between the Windows 8 interface and the Desktop app is tolerable. And if you're a mainstream consumer using a tablet to check email, surf the Web, and play games like Angry Birds, you can live exclusively in the Windows 8 world. It’s the middle ground that becomes annoying. All of the sudden, instead of using the great IE interface, you're faced with a conventional desktop browser. And when you're forced to the Desktop on a tablet, control is far less elegant.

The more I tried to use the W510 as a tablet, the more problems surfaced. Traditional smartphone/tablet apps are missing in Windows 8. There's no alarm clock. While you can download alarm clock apps, none of them are as effective as what comes bundled in iOS. I’m not sure how this oversight made it past Microsoft. Free third-party alarm clock apps do not reliably wake up the tablet, and an unreliable alarm clock is a useless one.

During my time with the W510, I experienced a few crashes that required a power cycle. They weren't hard locks because Windows' animations were still moving. But the device was completely unresponsive to user input. I suspected an issue with Wi-Fi, since I also had trouble with Windows re-detecting the same access point as new. Even though the crashes only plagued me once a week or so, this is a flaw. During the same time, my Core i7-3770K-based desktop and Core i7-3930K-based workstation never crashed under Windows 8.

Originally, we wanted to publish this piece last December. Just before that, Acer released a BIOS update package that also included upgraded Intel drivers. This process went smoothly; there are not boot drives or firmware utilities to deal with. The update was as uneventful as what you'd expect from Apple. The new drivers were supposed to improve battery life, while maintaining performance. Gladly, I stopped encountering crashes after the software package was installed. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi remains spotty with my Linksys E4200 v1 router, and I have to reconnect to the AP manually after every restart.

6. Things Get Ugly; Almost Dreamliner-Ugly

Sadly, Acer spent so much time with Intel to optimize the touchscreen's responsiveness, and somehow it completely forgot about the keyboard dock. While it adds an extra battery, taking run time up to a theoretical 18 hours, and the keyboard itself is usable, the trackpad is not. This isn't even an issue of size or tactile feel. Rather, the trackpad misses movements and jumps around erratically.

Back in November, we were told that Acer was aware of the problem and working on a fix. We waited. And waited. And waited. At first, we heard it was a hardware issue. Then, that it was software. A quick search of Acer's community message boards turned up several others with the same complaint. We held off on our story, hoping the next driver package would fix the trackpad. The following BIOS did improve functionality, but the input surface was still unusable most of the time.

Then, the keyboard completely died. It still generated a tone when I attached it to the tablet, but its battery no longer charged and it was no longer detected in Windows. So, I decided to ship my sample in to Acer.

It was a little tricky getting through to the company's online support system. After filling out the requisite forms, I received an RMA number. Unlike Lenovo, which ships out a box with a prepaid label for service, or an Apple tablet that can be walked in to an Apple store, Acer left it up to me to ship off my broken device. Because shipping was on my tab and only the keyboard was broken, I shipped it on its own. Then, I waited.

Then I got a call from an Acer rep, who wanted me to ship the tablet and keyboard together, arguing that the service department needed to check compatibility between by keyboard and tablet. Also, there was no serial number for the keyboard, and they had to associate the dock with a tablet. Bear in mind that the keyboard would no longer charge; it was obviously broken. Talking to support on the phone was fruitless. They were nice; they just weren't able to do anything.

It's not the buyer's fault that Acer doesn't have a unique serial number for its keyboard. It only appears that Acer doesn't have the flexibility to help its customers as Apple. If you have a Mac Pro with a defective mouse or keyboard, the company replaces it as long as the system is under warranty. In this case, the keyboard is specific to Acer's W510, a brand-new product, meaning that all W510 keyboards are under warranty. Shoot, Logitech once replaced a broken G7 mouse, even though I had no receipt and the serial number was completely worn through. Why? The G7's warranty was longer than the product had been available, so customer service understood that every G7 was still protected by Logitech's warranty at the time.

Not Acer, though. They wouldn't even evaluate the dock until I shipped the tablet, even though the keyboard could easily be confirmed broken by plugging a charger into it (the dock can charge independently). Since I never send notebooks for repair with their hard drives, I spent time scrubbing my data. Since I didn't want the tablet damaged in shipping, I carefully packed it back up into the retail box and supplemental cardboard sleeve. I left the charger out, but included the manuals, documentation, and cleaning cloth because they provided additional structural support in the bento-box style packaging. The package went to Acer's repair facility via FedEx two-day. More out of pocket costs. My tablet arrived at Acer on February 14. I received it back February 28.

When the unit arrived, it came wrapped in plastic in a brown box. My retail packaging was gone. This wasn't an Acer press sample either, mind you. It was purchased at Central Computer in the Bay Area, and the box even had a Central Computer sticker on it. It was sent as part of an Intel review kit, but it was a retail product nonetheless. Sigh.

7. Reconsidering The W510

In my original draft of this story, I thought the W510 was two steps away from our highest honor. The company needed to adjust pricing to $500 instead of $600, and it needed to fix the keyboard. At that lower price point, there was an argument to be made for trading off 3D performance in favor of full x86 compatibility. Many folks, including myself, who have a system for gaming and don't need 3D on the road, would find that reasonable.

But as I waited for Acer to fix the tablet's trackpad, and then went back and forth with customer service, my opinion changed. As much as I was willing to acclimate to Windows 8's idiosyncrasies, poor customer service and not-quite-polished hardware made Acer's Iconia W510 more of a technology demonstration than a real-world winner. Most frustrating is that Acer's engineers in Taiwan and its customer service folks in America aren't the ones to blame. The whole system was broken. Nobody tested the track pad to make sure it worked as well as the touch screen. The individual customer service folks were very kind and rationally understood how silly sending the whole tablet back for a broken dock, but were powerless to help. And the retail box, which Acer spent so much time crafting for a grand reveal, was discarded without any consideration. Somewhere along the line, someone just didn't care.

I don't know that Apple truly cares about its customers. In the end, it's a business, and its employees are only doing what they think will be profitable. Where Apple succeeds is that it knows a good business needs good customer service. With Apple, you can bring in a broken iPad and walk out with a refurbished one the same day. Your 12-month warranty is really a 13-month warranty; if you're just out of the coverage period, they'll still cover your product, suggesting that they actually care. None of those perks are free. They're part of the Apple Tax. The problem is that companies trying to compete against Apple forget that its premium is more than just hardware, an operating system, and arbitrary mark-up. It also involves service. So, even though companies like Acer are in hot pursuit of Apple when it comes to hardware, they are generations behind everywhere else.

Of course, my purpose here wasn't just to unload on Acer. I originally wanted to evaluate the technology in the W510, and discuss Intel's challenge to ARM. Can x86 CPUs compete in the tablet space? The answer is a resounding yes. Today's Atom offers performance that's competitive with the fastest platforms powering Android- and iOS-based devices, yielding comparable battery life. The SoC itself appears even faster and more responsive thanks to a custom set of drivers. As the next generation of ARM CPUs emerges, so too will we see the next iteration of Atoms.

Intel currently employs 32 nm high-K lithography to manufacture Atom. But it has the ability to improve performance and efficiency even more as it transitions to 22 nm FinFET. If the company can introduce similar gains as what we saw shifting from the desktop Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge architectures, with more speed and lower power, it's going to change the low-power CPU marketplace. Intel just needs to find the right team to build the best hardware. Now, is it really any surprise that the company shut down its desktop motherboard division and tasked those engineers with creating boards for new devices?