Atom powered Asus Eee Pad Slider could be in the works

For the most part, almost all the news we’ve previously heard about the Eee Pad Slider pointed to it being powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. However, Asus might have something else planned, as the keen folks over at Liliputing.com managed to spot a listing for an Atom version of the tablet on Intel’s Oak Trail multimedia page.

The Intel Oak Trail processors were released earlier this month and are aimed at the smartphone and tablet markets. The official product page contains various images of Oak Trail powered devices and that’s where the Asus Eee Pad Slider was spotted. According to the page, the Slider will be powered by an Atom Oak Trail Z670 processor which is a single-core, 1.5GHz, 32-bit chip. The only other bit of information provided by the product page was the mention of a 10.1” IPS display, which is in line with what we’ve previously known.

While this is the first we’ve heard about the Eee Pad having an Atom processor, NotebookItalia did previously report that the Slider would be receiving a hardware update in September (the Eee Pad Slider should begin selling in May). When you add that bit of info with the spotted images on the Oak Trail website, the logical conclusion is that Asus is planning on releasing an Atom powered version of the tablet sometime this year. This news does coincide with reports that up to 35 different Atom Tablets could be available this May, but we’ll have to wait on Asus to officially confirm or deny the news.

The Tegra 2 powered version of the Slider features a 1280x800 pixel resolution, up to 1GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of space and should ship next month for a price between $500 and $800.

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