Intel 2013 Ultrabook specifications: Touchscreens, WiDi, Haswell and more

Intel outlined a number of interesting points for its next-gen Ultrabooks during its press conference at CES 2013.

The firm gave a taste of the specifications we can expect later this year providing details on compulsory features, battery life and pricing.

Compulsory features

The chipmaker announced that touchscreen functionality and the inclusion of Wireless Display (WiDi) technology will become standard within Ultrabooks.

Mandatory touchscreens are unsurprising as the Live Tile interface of Windows 8 is designed to be used via touch input. Firms such as Acer have already started shipping Ultrabooks (S7) with touch screens.

The inclusion of Intel's WiDi technology as standard will also help to boost the usefulness of Ultrabooks and circumvent the need for display ports and cables.

Using WiDi, users will be able to duplicate films onto HDTVs, or simply connect to an additional display without wires.

A business edition dubbed WiDi Pro will facilitate screen-to-screen collaboration by allowing users to connect over a local network. This will be particularly useful for those having meetings or travelling with colleagues.

Battery life

Ultrabooks have been promising "all-day battery life", but Intel and its partners have not quite delivered yet. So will 2013 be the year when you can finally leave your Ultrabook charger at home without worrying about running out of juice midway through the day?

Intel's next-generation chips codenamed Haswell will go a long way towards making this happen. Indeed the firm has been telling anyone who will listen that Haswell will deliver the biggest jump in battery life users have seen in these platforms for a decade.

Haswell will come in dual-core and quad-core varieties and power consumption is expected to hit the 10W TDP mark, thanks to the 22nm architecture used to manufacture the chip.

Kirk Skaugen, Intel's vice president of PC client group claimed that Haswell processors are the first Intel chips that have been built specifically for Ultrabooks.

So what about the numbers? Skaugen claimed that Ultrabooks should have up to nine hours of battery life.

However, on stage he did debut an Intel reference design Ultrabook codenamed North Cape. The 13.3in device offers 13 hours of battery life.

Pricing

Despite packing touch screen technology and better processors, the cost of devices are likely to be driven down during 2013. Upon launch the next-gen Ultrabooks are set to retail at $799, with pricing expected to drop to the $599 mark by the end of the year.