First affordable LTE Windows 8.1 tablet appears on the market

The Colorful Colorfly 4G tablet
The Colorful Colorfly 4G tablet

Taiwanese manufacturer Chaintech has unveiled one of the first affordable 4G Intel-based tablets that is powered by Windows 8.1. The Colorful Colorfly i108W tablet is dubbed, in an unconventional way, as a "Young people's first 4G Win8 tablet".

It uses an "aerospace grade aluminum alloy" and runs on an Atom BayTrail-T Z3735F processor clocked at 1.33GHz. Since it is a 10.1-inch model, it doesn't get any subsidised Windows 8.1 from Microsoft or a free one-year subscription to Office 365 for that matter.

Other than the IPS full HD display, it comes with 2GB of RAM, 64GB onboard storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a rear 5-megapixel camera and a front facing 2-megapixel one, but perhaps most importantly, it supports TD-LTE, which allows speeds of up to 100Mbps downstream (FDD bands 1 to 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 20).

It is very likely that the modem used is an XMM7260 from Intel, the only one in its portfolio to support TD-SCDMA, used by China Mobile which is listed as one of the compatible Chinese telcos.

The rest of the configuration includes a 8000mAh battery, a microUSB port, two speakers but no HDMI or microSD card slot. There's no confirmation yet as to whether the tablet will launch outside of China (where it retails for about £172 (around $277, AU$317) however do expect others to follow suite.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.