Nvidia has updated its latest mobile chipset with support for Category 4 LTE connectivity. Tegra 4i, similar to Tegra 4 but includes an integrated Nvidia i500 LTE modem, managed to upgrade from Category 3 and its 100Mbps connection to LTE-Advanced and a possible 150Mps speed, without performing any changes to the hardware.
Graphic card producer Nvidia today reported revenue for the first quarter of the company's fiscal 2014, which ended April 28. The company report income of $954.7 million, down 13.7 percent from $1.11 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013. The company posted a $77.9 million profit, with earnings per share of $0.13, down 53.6 percent from $0.28 in the prior quarter. The results beat Wall Street expectations for the quarter, and the company expects to return to growth later in the year, on the strength of the margins on the Kepler GPU chipset and the release of the Tegra 4 system-on-a-chip.
Toshiba is preparing to release a new tablet running on Tegra 4, according to leaked details and photographs. Images reported to be for the Toshiba AT10LE-A have surfaced, showing that Nvidia's latest mobile processor clocked at 1.8GHz will be combined with a 10.1-inch display and a keyboard dock with chicklet-style keys.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang speaking at the 2013 GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, CA unveiled the company's mobile Tegra chipset roadmap, and discussed future GPU technology in the pipeline for the company. Also shown was the rack mountable GRID Visual Computing Appliance (VCA), offering virtualized GPU computing and remote graphics capabilities to allow a server to handle processor-intensive rendering jobs, with the output streamed to lower powered clients.
Nvidia has formally introduced its Project Grey chip, which is officially known as the Tegra 4i. Marketed as a superior alternative to Qualcomm's Snapdragon offerings, which have proved extremely popular in the smartphone market, the new chip brings a much smaller footprint than the current Tegra 4 SoC while adding an integrated LTE modem.
Nvidia has kicked off the first in a regular blog updating gamers on the latest developments with its highly anticipated Tegra 4-powered Project Shield gaming handheld. The first demonstration, following its surprise CES debut, focuses on its AFK (Away From Keyboard) PC gameplay extending capabilities. In the demo, Nvidia highlights how the handheld gaming device can stream Borderlands 2 from a GeForce GTX-enabled PC for remote gaming.
Nvidia may be moving towards building its own mobile devices for sale in Russia and China, according to one report. The chip maker, after showing off Tegra 4 at CES, could end up creating smartphones and tablets running on its own hardware, and end up selling them through OEMs as white label hardware.
Bracketron has added two more mounts to its range of mobile device holders. The Mi-T Grip Dash Mount attaches to a dashboard or any hard surface using suction, and provides a low-profile way of holding an iPad mini or small tablet in a vehicle. A more-conventional Universal Tablet Window Mount performs the same task, but has a reinforced articulating arm and 360-degree rotating head for precise positioning from a glass surface. Prices and a release date have yet to be revealed, but are likely to be around $30 each, based on previous releases.
Nvidia has shown off a new handheld gaming system alongside its next-generation Tegra 4 mobile processor. Titled Project Shield, the portable gaming device will play Android-based games as well as PC titles on Steam, by streaming gameplay footage over a Wi-Fi connection from a personal computer that renders the game itself.
Details of Nvidia's next mobile chipset have surfaced, in the form of a presentation slide. The image claims that Tegra 4, codenamed "Wayne" in the slide, will have 72 cores for graphical content, giving the chipset six times the power of Tegra 3 and twenty times that of the chipset generation before that, Tegra 2.
A heavily changed version of the Wikipad gaming tablet is slated for release at Gamestop. The PlayStation Certified 10.1-inch tablet now sports a 1.4Ghz Tegra 3 processor with 1 GB of RAM, 16 or 32GB of storage, and has a MicroSD slot for expansion. Most importantly, a deal signed with gaming service Gaikai is still being honored despite the streamer having been purchased by Sony.
Sony has an upcoming handset, the Xperia T, which was just revealed in a number of hands-on photos from Russian site Nixanbal. Along with the generous amount of photos, some of which can be send below, some early tech specs are also revealed. They include a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of integrated storage.
The new HTC tablet that is headed to the UK and elsewhere may be called the Vertex HD. Based on the leaked NenaMark 2 benchmarks, the new tablet will center on a 10.1-inch 1280x800 display and be powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. It is also running Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich), though there are no hints as to whether it has "something unique to offer" as HTC spokesperson teased yesterday.
The chipset underlying Google's Nexus 7 and other forthcoming 7-inch tablets may also be making its way to smartphones in the near future. According to MyDrivers.com, Nvidia's Kai platform which enables quad-core mobile computing at a lower price point, will be appearing in smartphones produced by Chinese handset makers before the end of this year.
Most of the gear at E3 has focused on traditional game consoles, however Nyko brought along its PlayPad gamepads for Android tablets. Electronista stopped by the company's booth to try out the Bluetooth-connected PlayPad and its larger sibling, the PlayPad Pro.
Gaming peripherals maker Nyko has revealed two new gamepads at E3, with the PlayPad and PlayPad Pro. Meant for NVIDIA Tegra 2 or 3-powered tablets running on the Android OS, the pair was developed in conjunction with NVIDIA. The wireless controllers work with TegraZone game titles, though a free Playground app will allow playing older and different titles as well.
As part of Nvidia's annual investor meeting, the company's GM of Tegra operations, Mike Rayfield, boasted that the quad-core Tegra 3 platform is proving to be quite popular, powering 30 different smartphones that are expected to arrive on the market before the end of the year. Nearly half of the models are said to carry a transfer price below $300, in contrast to current Tegra 3-equipped phones that tend toward the high end of the price spectrum.
The Acer Iconia A510 Olympic tablet will be reaching the UK in June through Carphone Warehouse. The special-edition tablet shares the specs of the Iconia Tab A510, with the main differences being an engraving of the Olympic rings on the back and a pre-loaded trial of Eurosport Player, to watch the broadcaster's Olympic coverage.
Chinese site PCOnline has torn down the new HTC One X smartphone. More accurately, it's the Chinese variation of the flagship handset. The skinny phone was separated thanks to a narrow plastic tool.
Samsung's GT-i9300, possibly the third-generation Galaxy, has had its performance leaked through inadvertent postings to GLBenchmark. The 3D tests caught by a Phone Arena reader show that the quad-core Exynos 4412 chip in the device looks to beat any existing Android phone, and likely the iPhone 4S, by a wide margin. In the common-use Egypt test, the i9300 would be roughly a third faster than the similarly quad-core Tegra 3 in the international HTC One X and three times faster than Samsung's own Galaxy S II.
Arriving as expected, the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 was given more concrete US launch details on Sunday. The entry Android 4.0 tablet is available now in a blue variant for $379 with 16GB and Wi-Fi. A 32GB version costs just $399, and the namesake notebook-like dock adds $149 to either capacity's price.
NVIDIA will release a mobile graphics chip that has more processing power than the current Xbox 360 sometime later in 2013 or 2014, the company said in ap presentation handed out to the media. The slide's projection for console performance does drop off at 2012. The solid lines represent estimated performance, with the dotted ones standing for trends.
NVIDIA helped validate some leaks regarding its future Tegra roadmap in a presentation at HTC's Freqs event in Seattle on Thursday. Along with the known Wayne, its codename for Tegra 4, it also mentioned a Tegra 3+. What it would entail wasn't mentioned, but the name implied a clock speed boost or other minor updates that wouldn't fundamentally rework the quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip.
A white version of the LG Optimus 4X HD has been spotted. A preview by ePrice shows a white housing on the latest Optimus handset, which we tried at Mobile World Congress with the standard black scheme.
Following a formal US launch late last month, Acer has started selling the Iconia Tab A510 in the US. The Android 4.0 tablet is currently in stock from Acer, and presumably resellers, at its quoted $450 price for a 32GB Wi-Fi model. Buying from Acer itself gets the Olympic Game Edition, which has the competition's logo on the back but is otherwise similar to the reference design.
Motorola might be making a fundamental shift from its loyalty to TI if an inadvertent GLBenchmark test run posting is an indicator. A phone known as the MB886, codenamed Qinara and possibly a reference to the Dinara has shown up using Qualcomm's MSM8960, or the same 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 chip as found in phones like HTC's One S. Motorola has used TI's OMAP and occasionally NVIDIA's Tegra 2 in its Android phones, suggesting a new direction in chip options.
Instagram has updated its Android app yet again to support a much wider range of devices. The app (Google Play) now supports devices using NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processor. Doing so enables both the HSPA+ version of the HTC One X, the ASUS Transformer Prime, and any other phone or tablet running the quad-core chip.
Toshiba grew its Excite tablet line in both directions on Tuesday with three new models to cover every possible category. The Excite 7.7 (which we've tried), Excite 10, and Excite 13 (AT770) all carry a quad-core Tegra 3 chip along with a completely stock version of Android 4.0 bundled with apps like Netflix and Zinio's reader. They keep the slimmer builds of past Excite models but with a more rounded, polished design.
More details of NVIDIA's Tegra 4 have emerged that could point to as much of a leap in speed as with the last generation. Possible leaks from VR-Zone have shown the line keeping the "4-plus-1" quad-core design but jumping to the much newer ARM Cortex-A15 architecture inside, which should give it a leap in speed at the same clock speed. The clock speeds themselves should climb from 1.5GHz to 2GHz to give it brute force improvements.
Nissan and Intel have forged a relationship to integrate the latter's Atom chips into some of the former's vehicles. Only higher-end vehicles will be equipped with these Atom-powered in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems starting in 2013, however, and will likely first appear in Nissan's luxury brand, Infiniti. The Infiniti LE electric car concept was just unveiled earlier on Thursday at the New York International Auto Show sporting the twin-display IVI.
China's ZTE announced its financial details from 2011 on Thursday, revealing sales that were up 23.4 percent from 2010, at the equivalent of $13.67 billion. The company, which manufactures smartphones, tablets, and both network as well as telecom gear, did suffer in terms of net profits, however, posting a 36.6 percent loss (at $326.5 million) as compared to 2010. The company is expanding in overseas markets, including the US and the UK, and has debuted eight new devices to this end at last month's Mobile World Congress.
NVIDIA's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in an interview mid-week has predicted that Android tablets will hit $199 by the summer. Speaking to the New York Times, he predicted that the presumably Tegra-based hardware would shave about $150 in costs. Some of this would come from reducing flash storage, although he also implied that quality might take a drop through reductions in "build materials."
HTC on Thursday set out the first launches of the One X, One S, and One V outside of Taiwan. Austria, Germany, and Switzerland will all get the Android 4.0 centerpiece phones on April 2. Prices for the One X, One S, and One V will come in at 599 euros (719 Swiss francs), 499 euros (599 francs), and 299 euros (349 francs).
Apparent new leaks have hinted that NVIDIA's next-generation Tegra, for now called the Tegra 4, should be a generational leap. The future 28 nanometer chip was said by VR-Zone's tips to be getting GPGPU support to use its graphics core for boosting CUDA, OpenCL, and other general-purpose tasks. The simple addition would hint at a graphics core multiple generations newer than what's in the Tegra 3, which dates back to the 2006-era PlayStation 3.
Fresh tests of the new iPad have shown that concerns over its temperature have been overstated in light of competition. The range of Macworld tests showed that, despite the extra backlighting and larger processor demanded by the new screen, the current Apple tablet is within a few degrees of the lower-resolution, slower ASUS Transformer Prime and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE. In a few cases, such as under maximum load for over an hour, the Galaxy Tab was slightly hotter.
The same source as the original leak of the HTC One X for AT&T has since posted benchmarks showing it possibly taking the crown for the fastest Android device yet. Despite stepping down from the international version's quad-core Tegra 3 to the dual-core Snapdragon S4, the AT&T version was shown by Android Central forum contributor Phonegeek to be roughly twice as fast. Qualcomm's own Vellamo browser test showed the Android 4.0 phone mostly thriving in CPU-heavy JavaScript, a feat borne out by Quadrant's very high CPU and memory scores.
NVIDIA's mobile lead Rene Haas in a conversation published overnight saw both his own company and Apple squeezing out traditional low-end notebooks. He explained to CNET that, just as Apple's MacBook Air had mostly killed the need for a "middle" system between the ultraportable and the faster MacBook Pro, NVIDIA would serve both Tegra-based mobile devices at the low end and graphics-heavy, performance-based notebooks on top. It was the stereotypical Windows notebook, which didn't have any of the performance edges or the portability, that was most at risk.
Acer on early Thursday detailed the North American version of the Iconia Tab A510, its first real answer to the new iPad. The quad-core Tegra 3 tablet will reach the US and Canada with 32GB of storage in both black- and silver-backed versions. Every version ships with a 10-inch, 1280x800 display, a five-megapixel rear camera, a front one-megapixel camera, and mini HDMI video out.
Huawei's self-proclaimed fastest phone in the world, the Ascend D quad, may have had its released moved back by at least a month if tips are accurate. While unconfirmed, CNMO understood that it would go from expectations of shipping before the end of the spring to only starting production in June. The actual release would "likely" be in July, but the step left room for it to ship later still if timing required it.
Sprint and HTC on Tuesday jointly sent invitations to Electronista and others for their "latest collaboration" on April 4. The New York City invitation was sparse on details beyond having Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and HTC president Jason MacKenzie, using a pin in the graphic as a possible clue. While it might be a hint as to a pen-based tablet, it may also just be a reference to Sprint's classic "needle drop" TV ads.
A fresh comparison has validated many of the suspicions that the new iPad's A5X may well be faster than NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processor in a large number of tests. Apple's slate, despite competing against a quad-core chip from a company considered an expert in graphics, was faster in visually-oriented tests conducted by Laptop. While a standard GLBenchmark test showed it about 13 percent faster, a texture fill rate test in the same suite showed it having almost five times the processing power in that area.
(Update: extra rumors) Google's repeatedly rumored reference Android tablet, informally thought of as a Nexus tablet, may be focused on cost even more than thought. A senior staffer at an American supply chain firm claimed to Android and Me that the price window had been dropped by $50 to $149 to $199. However, any chance at a quad-core Tegra 3 might be dashed, as it would use an unnamed chip to save money.
O2's UK division posted on Twitter what might have been an inadvertent confirmation of the launch date of the HTC One X. The quad-core phone was due to come in on April 5, roughly fitting in with HTC's early spring target. Prices and rates for the phone hadn't been set.
Google's rumored Nexus-like Android tablet has once more been attached to ASUS by a leak late Thursday. The seven-inch tablet was now thought by Digitimes' contacts to be coming as soon as May for between $199 to $249. ASUS had been picked because it could manufacture the devices itself and had "good product quality."
NVIDIA responded to Apple's claims of performance for the new iPad. Representative Ken Brown told ZDNet that NVIDIA didn't have the benchmark criteria Apple used to claim a fourfold speed advantage over the Tegra 3 processor. As such, it couldn't verify the authenticity of the claims, which it implied might have been biased through the choice of apps.
Toshiba, on the heels of its showing off its still-mysterious AT270 7.7-inch tablet at Mobile World Congress last week, has revealed a conceptualization of a much larger sibling. The Japanese electronics maker has displayed a mock up of a 13.3-inch super-sized tablet. If Toshiba ultimately makes it into a commercial product, it's expected to come powered by a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor.
Huawei has used the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona to announce several new LTE smartphones and devices. The Chinese vendor has revealed that it would add LTE supported versions of the Ascend D series and Ascend P1 handsets as well as the E3276 wireless network card and E5776 Wi-Fi hotspot to its product portfolio. Huawei will be introducing the devices to the European and Asian markets by July.
Android platform developer Splashtop has just released its Splashtop THD ($7, Android Market) app, meant exclusively for NVIDIA Tegra 3-powered tablets such as the ASUS Transformer Prime. The software lets users stream audio or video from their PCs and Macs to the tablet, including using nearly any desktop program, such as graphics-intensive games. This last part purportedly requires an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card in order to play titles like Skyrim in full-screen mode.
Yesterday we took a look at most of ZTE's new smartphones for 2012, and we stopped by the company's booth again to check out the PF112. The device is one of many Tegra 3-powered smartphones that have been brought to Barcelona this week, marking ZTE's attempt to establish itself in the mid- to high-end smartphone market.
NVIDIA has ended up being the star of Mobile World Congress so far, heading up the processor choice in devices like the HTC One X or LG Optimus 4X HD. A pleasant surprise, however, has been Toshiba's so far still unofficial 7.7-inch tablet, which it briefly teased at CES. It's called the AT270, it runs on a Tegra 3, and NVIDIA let us try what could be one of the more interesting tablets of the show.
