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NVIDIA Gives More Details Of Its Upcoming KAI For Budget-Friendly Tablets

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by Roy Alugbue on
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It’s no secret that NVIDIA (and Android fanatics in general) are eager and excited about its upcoming KAI platform for tablets. We saw as recently as a few weeks ago how NVIDIA envisioned bringing premium quality to tablets for modest and reasonable prices, yet NVIDIA was rather vague and general about the concept and its intentions for Android consumers. That’s why it took the time to expand on the basic premise of what KAI is and why it will be important for any and all Android users. To begin, NVIDIA makes it completely clear that it’s not easy to bring a budget tablet device to the marketplace:

“The truth is, it’s incredibly difficult to manufacture a low-cost tablet at all, even with a compromised experience – one marked by poor performance, previous-gen display capabilities, mediocre battery life, discouraging touchscreen responsiveness, lack of apps, and low-quality build. Building one that’s satisfying and profitable is a whole other matter”.

That very reason is the basis of the KAI platform. NVIDIA got to thinking and wondered if it’s possible to bring its high-performing Tegra 3 chip, while keeping costs as low as possible for tablet devices. Well NVIDIA researchers found a way to bring its Tegra 3 technology for budget friendly tablets. In essence, the Tegra 3 is the ”blueprint providing the basis for future low-cost tablets with a premium experience that consumers will be able to buy” for KAI-based budget tablets. That means that eventually, users will be able to use the Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor (and its 4-PLUS-1 architecture and battery-saver core) in a variety of options and configurations such as NVIDIA’s own reference unit— which is a modest 7-inch tablet. NVIDIA also confirms that KAI technology will be found in many resolutions and sizes of Android tablets.

NVIDIA doesn’t have much more for the Android community for now, but urges everyone to “stay tuned” to see what it and partner manufacturers are cooking up their sleeves. Looks like it will soon be time to finally splurge on a budget-friendly tablet device, right?

source: NVIDIA blog

Nvidia’s Integrated Tegra 3/LTE Chip Delayed Until 2013

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by Ed Caggiani on
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Nvidia announced their first-quarter earnings today and they made $60 million in profit and $924 million in revenue. Ok, congrats. But what we really care about is that the Tegra 3 processor with integrated LTE, codenamed “Grey”, is still not ready, and won’t be until next year.

CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said this during the earnings call:

“Looking forward, you’ll see Tegra 3 LTE phones with partners’ baseband processors in the second half of this year and then next year with our own LTE baseband processors as well.“

A previously-leaked roadmap suggested a delay until 2013, and this statement supports that. Huang also stated that partner baseband LTE chips might take a little longer than expected, arriving towards the end of this year. No reason for the delays were given, but Huang had this to say:

“Although we don’t have LTE at the moment, LTE is predominantly a U.S.-centric phenomenon. Outside of the United States, the big superphone upgrade is quad-core.“

Nvidia is missing out on the U.S. market since phones like the HTC One X are forced to use a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor instead of Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core chip because U.S. carriers are requiring LTE on their high-end devices. The possible saving grace for Nvidia is that Qualcomm is facing shortages of their S4′s, which buys Nvidia some time to catch up.

source: seeking alpha
via: the verge

Review of Dark Meadow: The Pact, a Tegra 3 Game With Visually Stunning Graphics and Awesome Game Play

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by Stacy Bruce on
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Remember back in the day when you could play cool PC games like Myst, where your fate was in your hands and it was entirely up to you to figure out what to do next? Well, NVIDIA recently teamed up with Phosphor games to bring us Android lovers a game similar to that but on a much higher level – Dark Meadow: The Pact. Now available for free in the Google Play store, Dark Meadow will provide you hours of nonstop fun all the while enjoying some of the greatest graphics I have seen yet on any Mobile device.

Taking full advantage of Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor, Dark Meadow is powered by the “Unreal Engine” that is responsible for games such as Gears of War and Infinity Blade. It is safe to say that Dark Meadow is approaching console quality gaming and when I played it on the Transformer Prime I never experienced any lag to speak of. This quickly became my most favorite game on Android hands down. I had an opportunity to spend some time with this game over the past day and I’ve compiled a short review and demo video that you should check out after this break. » Read the rest

Samsung Galaxy S III likely to come in Dual-core and Quad-core flavours

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by Chris Stewart on
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It’s less than 24 hours since Samsung broke the news that the next Galaxy would launch with the Quad0core Exynos processor and already reports are coming in that there is a high probability of a Dual-core version too. It’s no secret that the Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-core processor doesn’t play nicely with LTE networks hence HTC’s decision to opt for a Dual-core Snapdragon S4 chip for the US model of the One X. Could it be that Samsung’s latest and greatest chip will also present similar problems? The Korea Times certainly seems to think so as it recently got a tip-off from an unnamed Samsung exec that whilst the new Exynos chip will be on board internationally, the US model may feature the Snapdragon S4. The mystery exec was quoted as saying “Samsung plans to release its Galaxy S3 smartphone according to different specification and different markets. For European consumers, it will use 3G and the company’s own quad-core mobile APs, while its own solution that combines LTE, 3G and quad-core mobile APs will be used in the Korean version. But only in the United States, will Samsung use Qualcomm chips.”

I wouldn’t be too hasty about stewing over the lack of Exynos chip in the Galaxy S III (if the rumours are true of course) The Snapdragon S4 has proven on a number of occasions that it’s more than capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Quad-core giants. Will the choice of chip influence your decision on whether or not you’ll be picking up Samsung’s next uber-phone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

 

source : Korea Times

 

Is Motorola Switching to Snapdragon S4 Processors Because of LTE?

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by Ed Caggiani on
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In a benchmark test posted on GLBenchmark.com, a Motorola device listed as MB886 and codenamed qinara is shown using a Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset, better known as the dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Krait. To our knowledge, this is Motorola’s first foray into Qualcomm territory, having previously used TI’s OMAP series or NVIDIA’s Tegra chipsets.

More and more devices are moving to the S4 because of its compatibility with 4G LTE technology. NVIDIA’s Tegra series has had reported incompatibilities with LTE, which is why HTC’s One X series in the U.S. dropped the quad-core Tegra 3 in favor of the S4. Though the S4 is only dual-core, not quad-core like the Tegra 3, it has shown great promise in benchmarks.

This Motorola device is running Android 4.0.3 at an HD resolution of 1196×720, and will be launching on AT&T. Could qinara be the DROID RAZR HD? Or the Atrix 3? Or something completely different? View the benchmark results after the break.

» Read the rest

Quick Thoughts On Soulcraft THD Beta For Tegra Devices

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by Roy Alugbue on
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NVIDIA’s Tegra platform is no doubt a great one for showcasing Android gaming. We know there are plenty of Tegra-exclusive games out there, but there’s one game that’s standing out head and shoulders above the rest of the Tegra-based games. You may have heard about a certain Action-RPG called Soulcraft THD, which is pretty much a dark fantasy game on steroids. The beta has currently been in beta for a few months now and while the developer Mobilebits claims there are still some bugs to be worked out, the game runs incredibly fluid while the graphics are smooth like butter. » Read the rest

NVIDIA CEO Hints at $199 Tegra 3 Android Tablet By Summer

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by Ed Caggiani on
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In an interview with the New York Times, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is quoted as saying, “We took out $150 in build materials, things like expensive memory. At $199, you can just about buy a tablet at a 7-Eleven.” The discussion centered around the possibility of a quad-core Tegra 3-powered tablet at the magic $199 price point by this coming summer.

Rumors of an ASUS-built 7-inch Tegra 3 Google Nexus tablet have been making the rounds, as well as the rumor of the cancellation of said tablet in favor of a cheaper non-Tegra 3 version. In any case, Huang seems pretty confident that a $199 Tegra 3 tablet will be possible very soon. Whether it’s with ASUS or another manufacturer, and whether it will be a Nexus tablet or not, only time will tell.

The Kindle Fire‘s success makes this price point very desirable, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see multiple 7-inchers around that price. If it’s possible to get there with a quad-core Tegra 3 on board, all the better.

Would a $199 quad-core Android tablet interest you? Would it be more interesting as a Nexus tablet? Let us know in the comments.

source: new york times
via: androidandme

Nvidia Tegra 3 vs. Apple A5X

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by Chris Stewart on
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As is the case with every big Apple announcement, the Cupertino giant made some bold claims in the middle of the presentation for its latest magical device, The new iPad. Specifically Apple was quick to throw up some graphs showing that its new A5x dual-core processor has four times the graphics processing power when compared with Nvidia’s latest and greatest, Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Naturally Nvidia was quick to respond to Apple’s claims and so begins the war of the latest chapter in the war of the processors.

Here at TalkAndroid we feel that actions speak louder than words and thankfully the team at Laptop Mag agree. Armed with the new iPad and an Asus Transformer Prime they went to work putting both processors through a series of real life tests and benchmarks with some surprising results.

In terms of Graphics performance, benchmarks showed that Apple’s claims were pretty accurate with the A5X processing twice as many frames at twice the speed. Interestingly, when actually testing the same game on both devices it was noticed that the real world differences were not actually very significant. The iPad’s screen displayed sharper, brighter images which is largely down to the high resolution display. The Transformer Prime showed some additional graphical touches that weren’t present on the iPad but that could well be down to optimisation within the game.

When both devices were put through their paces in number crunching and raw processing power, the Nvidia Tegra 3 chip came into its own. The Transformer Prime outperformed the iPad in integer, floating point and memory performance by almost 3 times the score. Benchmarks on browser performance were extremely similar with the iPad slightly edging the Transformer however again this could be down to browser optimisation.

In summary we can see that both chips are extremely powerful and excel in different areas. It’s safe to say that the average consumer is unlikely to be disappointed with either. If gaming is the primary motivation behind your tablet purchase then the iPad might be the better option. For every day tasks, the Transformer should offer a bit more grunt.

Check out the video below and let us know your thoughts on how the two processors compare in the comments.

 

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source : Laptop Mag

Mystery Sony device benchmarked, Ice Cream Sandwich and Tegra 3 onboard

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by Chris Stewart on
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So what does the freshly energized Sony have up its sleeve for Android fans in 2012, well the Sony V150 for starters but just what exactly is it? Android GPU benchmarking tool, NenaMark has an interesting benchmark result on its website that’s sure to get the tech world talking. The table key tells us that the V150 is a 1.4GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 device with a 1280 x 752 display and Android Ice Cream Sandwich on board. Even more interesting is the impressive 59.70 score which positions the V150 well ahead of the 42.89 score achieved by the Tablet S.

Sony Ericsson made a stuttering start to its Android push with mixed fortunes, the Xperia range of devices never really hit the same sales or critical acclaim as rival products from Samsung, HTC and Motorola in particular. With the buyout of Sony Ericsson complete and the birth of Sony Mobile Communications confirmed, the new setup is really pushing to ensure a turnaround in performance and perception on its Android devices. We certainly wouldn’t want to read too much into a single benchmark but the early signs are promising.

Check out the benchmark results below and let us know your thoughts on Sony’s bright new future in the comments.

 

source : NenaMark

Huawei’s Ascend D Quad XL – Perhaps World’s Fastest Smartphone Indeed

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by Jim Farmer on
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The Nvidia Tegra 3, Qualcomm S4, and now the Apple A5X…all of these beastly new quad chipsets claim to be the best. Don’t make any judgement yet. There’s another contender here to join the fray, and it just may be a winner. I’m referring to Huawei’s K3V2. Developed in house by Huawei, this quad core monster comes in 1.2 & 1.5 gigahertz configurations and features a 16 core GPU. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s 4 more than the Tegra 3. From the look of these benchmarks, it makes a difference. » Read the rest

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