Speaking on how they created the idea of a single energy-saving core – seen first in the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor – with 4-PLUS-1 technology, sleeping with this one sleeper core for low-powered tasks. Huang spoke also of the first software-defined radio – Deep Execution Processor – and the Computational Camera using both the CPU and the GPU with the sensors of the mobile camera – introduced on the Tegra 4.

Inside Logan we’ll be seeing CUDA 5 and Kepler. This is the first time we’ve seen a mobile processor incorporating CUDA, and also the first time a Kepler GPU will be coming to the mobile universe. This processor will also be bringing on full CUDA 5 as well as OpenGL 4.3.

Interestingly enough, Huang mentioned that Logan – this next generation – will be coming out at the beginning of next year. As we’ve heard from NVIDIA not too many weeks ago, Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i will not be coming to market any sooner than the second half of 2013. In other words, we’re looking at some rather rapid movement between the two generations, without a doubt.

Have a peek at the timeline below as well as the GTC 2013 tag portal for more information on Tegra and the ever-expanding GPU universe of NVIDIA in many great and rather exciting ways! We’ll be here the whole conference long!

Be sure to tune in all week in our massive Tegra hub as well!

With ZTE once again joining up with NVIDIA to bring a “first” to the market, we’ve got to wonder how much of it we’ll see at Mobile World Congress (coming up in just a few days). ZTE generally brings quite a show to the international mobile event, but with an announcement set so close to the actual reveal, we can’t imagine a real bit of hardware really ready for the public so quick. Regardless, we will be seeing something big from NVIDIA and ZTE separately without a doubt.

Check our SlashGear 101: NVIDIA Tegra 4 in detail guide for more information on Tegra 4 as well – pump up your brain!

As far as this first Tegra 4 Super Phone from ZTE – whenever we do get to see it – it’ll be working with Android and will have the full-fledged NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor rather than the NVIDIA Tegra 4i we saw earlier this week. This means that the i500 LTE modem will not be integrated in on the SoC and the amount of GPU units inside will be higher as a result. While the Tegra 4i works with 60 GPU cores, the full Tegra 4 works with 72.

You’ll also be seeing the Tegra 4i in action with the Phoenix Reference Platform before too long as well. No release date has been mentioned with that device either, but we’re crossing our fingers for soon!

With ZTE bringing another hit to the market in 2013, we can’t help but hope that it’ll enter the USA this time around. ZTE is responsible for such cool devices as the ZTE Grand X with the first Tegra processor / Icera modem combo – we saw that last year at MWC as well. There’s also the ZTE U950, a Tegra 3-toting smartphone for less than $160 USD – an undeniably enticing combo.

Stick around in our Mobile World Congress 2013 portal for more information from the NVIDIA and ZTE teams in the near future – we’ll be flying in this weekend!

Though we’ve seen the HTC One X working with the NVIDIA Tegra 3 in an earlier iteration of both pieces of hardware, this new HTC handset brings the functionality to AT&T’s 4G LTE network. It’s important to note here that the HTC One X already on AT&T works with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor under the hood while the international version has the Tegra 3. With the HTC One X+, you’ve got the Tegra 3 matched with LTE – again, for the first time ever.

This piece of hardware has NVIDIA noting that it’s “67% faster than the HTC One X LTE” – and we’ll certainly be checking that claim once the device is in our hands for review. NVIDIA also notes that this device will have up to 50% (6 hours) more talk time attached to it than its AT&T predecessor and the whole experience will be swifter all around. The addition of the NVIDIA processor also allows the user to access the NVIDIA TegraZone for optimized games galore!

Have a peek at our review of the original HTC One X, comparison and review of the HTC One X LTE, and our hands-on with the HTC One X+, and stay tuned for our full review of the One X+ as well. We’ve also got a feature entitled HTC One X hands-on with Tegra 3 gaming if you’d like to take a glance. Coming up soon! Take a glance at the timeline below to learn more about the One X+ as well, and get pumped about it coming to AT&T for you soon!

[via NVIDIA]

Several years ago, such gameplay was relegated to consoles which were made specifically for such gigantic graphic tasks. With the current age of quad-core processors here on mobile devices such as the Nexus 7 (the device we’re having a peek at this game on), we’re able to do this and a whole lot more for a whole lot cheaper. The game Horn takes the Old English tales of King Horn and loosely crafts them into a magical arena of battle and exploration.

This game has you, Horn, moving through a village “overrun by fantastic, and sometimes humorous, monsters”. That said, you’ll have to make it through without giggling yourself to your doom – but you’ll have help! There’s a little beast that you carry around with you that sometimes spits some nastiness as the story moves on.

You’ll be working on enemies weak points, hitting heavy armor in all the wrong places, and working your way through waves of bosses, sub bosses, and “Golden Enemies” – cut them down for rare item drops! You’ll be collecting items, too – make sure you’re aware of what your carrying so you can be all you can be in the kill zone. There’s also an in-game store, a forge where you can upgrade your gear, weapons, amulets, and all sort of other items to rummage through.

There’s even a massive guide online you’ll want to find your way through if you want to survive your first few adventures – you might need it! This game is out (or will be very soon) on the NVIDIA TegraZone as well as the Google Play app store today – and it’s out for the iPad and iPhone as well starting earlier this month – grab it!

What’s amazing about the top winner in this event is that it’s one of the very few games that’s released to the larger Android world right out of the gate where most TegraZone games are available first only to Tegra processor-toting devices. This game was tested and developed first on the Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 processors and does indeed still work best, or so it’s said, on that set of chips, but has from its birth on the Android platform worked on all processors powerful enough to work with it.

See both games in action on the NVIDIA Tegra 3 toting HTC One X here:

If you’re going to play this re-release of one of the most classic shooter games of all time, we recommend grabbing either an HTC One X (international edition) or any of the many NVIDIA Tegra 3 tablets that have been released this year. The same goes for the second game that’s won an award in this anniversary: Shadowgun THD. This game has been part of the TegraZone family for many months now, and certainly sits in our own review packet as one of THE games to test a device with for performance.

Shadowgun THD won the award for Best Graphics, GTA III won the award for Best Gameplay, and GTA III won the “Best Overall” award. What a fabulous first year for NVIDIA’s mobile gaming portal!

The folks at NVIDIA have teamed up with Madfinger Games to develop a game that’s certainly not a sequal to Shadowgun, but I’ll be darned if it’s not in the same universe. You’ve got controls that are essentially identical, movement appears very similar, and many of the same technologies have been used to bring this next-level game to light.

Ragdoll physics, for example, will be implemented here so that your device can make full use of your SoC, with real-time rendering of objects right in front of your eyes. If you shoot a zombie in the face on the right side of its body, it’ll fly left. If you shoot the next zombie in the knee cap, it’ll fall in a completely different manner than the first.

You’ve got volumetric fog, variable lighting, and again, water and fluid effects that make the whole game seem that much more visually intense.

Have a peek at the trailer above and prepare for the release of this game very, very soon. Meanwhile check out the timeline posted below for a selection of other Tegra-enhanced choice games for Android.

This anniversary is celebrated by NVIDIA and the crews of both SlashGear and Android Community with a set of 6 [Anniversary Game Packs that you can get your hands on] this week! There are three here at SlashGear, [three over at Android Community], and a whole bunch more at NVIDIA as well! This is all part of NVIDIA’s “TegraZone Annual Players Choice Awards” which you can also participate in by heading to their mobile voting site to choose your all-time favorite NVIDIA Tegra-optimized game. You can also access that site by scanning the following QR-code:

Then if you’re feeling like you want as many chances to win a prize pack for this anniversary as you can, you can check out Android Community and SlashGear’s celebratory posts as well. Check out both sites to see how an ASUS Transformer Pad TF300, a TF300 keyboard dock, a Logitech game controller, and a Jawbone Jambox Speaker in sweet NVIDIA green can be yours quick!

Then feel free to check out the rest of the NVIDIA coverage we’ve got from this week – it’s been a wild one! NVIDIA has had a couple of conferences going on and have release info on Tegra 3 we know you’re gonna love. Something along the lines of 30 new Tegra 3 smartphones sound nice to you? Check it out!

This growth rate takes on what we already know about NVIDIA as a dominant force in the tablet market and expands it rapidly in the smartphone business across the earth. NVIDIA announced earlier today that they’d be pushing 30 smartphones with Tegra 3 by the end of the year. That’s by FAR the largest amount of devices they’ve ever pushed with Tegra in a year – and they dominated the tablet business last year with the Tegra 2.

Gray – the next level for Tegra

With Tegra 2 NVIDIA opened with two carriers worldwide – with Tegra 3, NVIDIA opens with more than 20. NVIDIA has “by far the strongest software system for graphics” as they say, here in the mobile world especially it seems. Have a peek at the timeline below to stay up to date with all the NVIDIA news announced today and stay tuned as the call continues!

Sonic’s newest adventure here has both you, Sonic, and your best buddy Tails rolling full speed through another set of robotic enemies galore complete with a whole new set of abilities as you do so. You’ll be speeding through a stack of levels right out of the box with frame rates as close to the original console version of the newest Sonic game – and with full HDMI output (on your ASUS Transformer Prime, for example) and a wired or Bluetooth controller, you’ll have the full Sonic experience at your fingertips.

Above you’ll see the game being played on the ASUS Transformer Prime, the screenshots also being taken from that tablet. This version also has a multiplayer co-op mode like all good Sonic games should, this available over your own home wireless network, and you’ve got full console-level graphics on all the Tegra 3-toting devices on the market today. This game is available on the Google Play app store and through the NVIDIA TegraZone this week.

UPDATE: Link will go live later today – stay tuned!

UPDATE II: The game is now live! Check it out on TegraZone or straight on Google Play! Note also that the game is now officially called “Sonic 4 Episode II THD” – grab it!

For those of you that have never played a Sonic game in the past – it’s a side-scrolling timed action game where you control Sonic the Hedgehog, a character with the ability to run at super-speed and crush his enemies with his spinning abilities. In this game you get to work with Tails, a multi-tail fox with the ability to fly through the air with these tails in many exciting ways. Your enemy is Dr Robotnik, a robot creature effectively bent on turning the natural world to electronics – you’ve gotta stop him, stop him at all costs!

Have a peek below at our timeline of hands-on experiences with every Tegra 3 device on the market (and about to be on the market) so you’ll have a good idea of what machines this game will be best on once you’ve got it downloaded. Get ready to smash Dr Robotnik once again with the most advanced version of Sonic for the mobile platform ever released!

This game is next in a long line of epic-quality high definition games for the Android mobile operating system, this a move by not only developers to get noticed on the platform, but NVIDIA’s move to bring light to their quad-core processor situation. This game has both high definition cinematic features and HD gameplay and will surely stave off your need to destroy demons all night long on your Transformer Prime – all night long I say! Have a peek at the trailer for this game here:

This game is also set to exist on Apple’s iOS mobile operating system as well as Windows Phone 7 (soon to be Windows Phone 8!) You’ll be destroying your enemies in this free2play format created with the Delta Engine by MobileBits. Have a glance at the game above then head to the Google Play App Store to download the game right this second – free!

First there’s Kepler, launched this week in its first iteration as the GTX 680, spoken about here by Jen-Hsun Huang in a letter posted by AnandTech:

“Today is just the beginning of Kepler. Because of its super energy-efficient architecture, we will extend GPUs into datacenters, to super thin notebooks, to superphones. Not to mention bring joy and delight to millions of gamers around the world.” – Huang

This should come as at least a little bit of a surprise to those of you who follow NVIDIA in the processor game, as it’s traditionally been Tegra that’s kept the whole Android world on the cuff. That said, it appears very likely that Tegra will be expanding as well. According to NVIDIA’s mobile chief Rene Haas speaking with CNET, Tegra is primed to bring the heat to a relatively forgotten category:

“I can see a world with Tegra-based systems that are very real thin-and-light devices and [on the other hand] more of the power-based systems that have [Intel's] Haswell with [Nvidia] GPUs. I think the middle category, these $499 cheap and ugly machines — battery life is not so great, the chassis is not so sexy — I think that category is potentially under siege.” – Haas

So NVIDIA is going up, down, left, and right with its System on Chips and GPUs and CPUs galore, don’t be surprised if every machine from the smallest system to the most gigantic server has NVIDIA somewhere in the mix relatively soon!

Plastic – even if it’s micro-drilled and carefully polished – always runs the risk of feeling cheap; that’s not a criticism you can level at the One S. HTC has readied two versions, each study metal and creak-free, one black with so-called “Ceramic Metal” finish and another with a grey “Graded Anodization” finish.

The former One S finish is the more exciting, though not necessarily as eye catching. Both have an almost soft-touch feel, but the “Ceramic Metal” One S borrows manufacturing processes from satellite production for something that’s five times stronger than regular anodized metal. Called “Micro Arc Oxidation”, the unibody fame is effectively bathed in plasma and then electrocuted, resulting in a momentary temperature hotter than the sun that oxidizes the surface and leaves it incredibly scratch-resistant. Although you can mark it with a fingernail, HTC promises us the scratches are in fact our nails wearing down, not the surface of the phone being marred.

Overall, the One S feels long and narrow. It’s fronted by a 4.3-inch AMOLED running at qHD 960 x 540 resolution, with excellent viewing angles and the sort of rich colors we’re used to from OLED-based displays. As with the other phones, HTC has turned to optical lamination to bond the AMOLED panel to the fascia glass, leaving the picture looking as though it’s swimming on the surface of the phone itself.

Inside there’s a 1.5GHz dualcore Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RAM, HSPA+ connectivity – along with WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 – and MHL-HDMI via the microUSB port, though no NFC unlike the One X. HTC has also opted for a micro SIM, which slots in underneath the camera surround panel on the back of the handset, but you won’t find either a removable battery or a microSD card slot. Instead, the 1,620mAh power pack is fixed, as is the 32GB of internal storage.

On the back is an 8-megapixel camera, using a Backside-Illuminated (BSI) sensor and a new f2.0 lens for 44-percent more light than the typical f2.4 lens other smartphone cameras might make do with. HTC has also introduced its own image processing chip, the uninspiringly named HTC Image Chip, which applies color correction and generally processing to the RAW frames, rather than – as with most phone cameras – converting to JPEG and then processing.

HTC is particularly proud of its camera experience on the new range, and the effort put in shows. The camera app boost swiftly – HTC tells us 0.7 seconds – and autofocus lock is even faster, at 0.2 seconds. We’ve seen fast autofocus on the Galaxy Nexus, though the downside can be somewhat poor fixes in the process, something which in our limited play the One S looks to have avoided.

Useful are the dual controls which allow for both stills and video to be captured simultaneously, and the burst photo mode that, rather than demanding you dig through the settings to activate it, automatically triggers when you keep your finger on the button. You can preset it to take up to 99 frames, and as soon as you lift your finger you’re presented with a gallery of all the shots to choose between (though you seemingly can’t play them back as a stop-motion clip). Even the flash has been fettled, addressing one of our common complaints – that LED flashes often wash out the frame – by having it automatically choose between seven levels of brightness depending on the proximity of the subject.

HTC Sense 4.0 is present, the company refusing to grant us pure Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but the UI is less cartoon-like overall. HTC claims to have made a conscious effort to pare back anything that unnecessarily added lag, such as widget animations or screen transitions, and Sense now feels crisper and less faux-analog.

Openness to third-party ecosystems has apparently been HTC’s watchword with Sense 4.0, and so the preloaded apps play more readily with external services. The Music app has now become a hub, bringing in not only your own local music but FM reception and services like Spotify, TuneIn radio and others. New services can be added from within the hub itself, and the end result is less jumping between apps (though you can’t apparently create a single playlist from multiple sources). You still get HTC Watch – now with support for HTC’s new MediaLink HD wireless HDMI dongle – and access to the HTC marketplace of apps and HTCSense.com online.

Best of all, though, with this phone HTC seems to have delivered everything the company promised was in the pipeline: the One S is solid, feels premium in the hand and is almost completely up to date with top-tier hardware from rivals – the only blip really being the missing NFC. With availability expected within 60 days – and, HTC told us privately, with a target of early April in Europe, with a Spring release on T-Mobile USA – this could be one of the stand-out phones of Q2. We’ll save our full opinion for the full SlashGear review, but HTC is definitely off to a better start than last year.

[Video Processing]

HTC opted for plastic rather than metal for the One X, a polycarbonate casing that helps keep weight down. While the sides have a high gloss finish, for aesthetic appeal, the back is soft-touch and matte for easier gripping. The speaker grille has, the company is keen to point out, been micro-drilled with perforations rather than using a separate grille section as on the Sensation series, keeping the design more cohesive.

In the hand, like many polycarbonate devices, the feel is still a little less premium than with metal. It’s light, though, and the side profile of the plastic chassis – into which the Super-LCD panel slots – gives the impression that, like the Galaxy Nexus, the handset is curved, even though the glass itself is entirely flat. On the back there are pogopins for a docking station or other accessories, together with a small pop-out microSIM tray accessed with an iPhone-style pin. No microSD card slot, however – 32GB of onboard storage is your lot – and the 1,800 mAh battery is non-user-accessible.

They share space with the Tegra 3, NVIDIA’s latest processor, along with HSPA+ connectivity, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and – for the first time in an HTC phone – NFC. In the US, AT&T will have an exclusive version of the One X, adding in 4G LTE connectivity but replacing the Tegra 3 with Qualcomm’s S4 dual-core. Having seen the S4 benchmarked last week, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

There’s also a microUSB port with MHL-HDMI output support, though HTC also has a new MediaLink HD wireless HDMI dongle which hooks up straight to your TV or projector’s input. Swipe up on your phone with three fingers and the output is automatically mirrored to your TV, with certain apps – like HTC’s own Watch video rental service – allowing you to use the One X’s display independently from playback on the big screen. That way you can check your email while you watch a movie.

A front-facing camera lives above the display, but the main action is on the back, where an 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash and 1080p Full HD video recording lives. HTC has used a Backside-Illuminated (BSI) sensor for improved low-light performance, together with an f2.0 lens that, the company claims, delivers 44-percent more light to the CMOS than a regular smartphone’s f2.4. That means either better shots in mediocre lighting, or faster regular photos.

Rather than instantly convert to lossy JPEG and then do color correction and other tweaks, HTC has used its own image processing chip – the mundanely named HTC Image Chip – to do all the heavy lifting on the RAW frame, before it gets converted and loaded into the gallery. There doesn’t appear to be any way to access the RAW images, however. It’s a swift camera too, with 0.7s to load up and then autofocus lock in 0.2s – faster, HTC boasts, than the blink of an eye, which comes in at around 0.3s – and while we haven’t got our stopwatches out here at MWC, it’s certainly one of the fastest cameras we’ve used.

HTC has reworked its camera app as part of overall changes introduced in HTC Sense 4.0, bringing more functionality to the primary controls rather than demanding you dig through for them. It’s a welcome change: now you can shoot photos and video simultaneously – the camera button stays on-screen while you’re filming, and frames are captured without interrupting video – and holding your finger down on the shutter release automatically triggers burst photo mode. That can be preset to fire off up to 99 frames, with a viewer automatically loading when you lift your finger.

Even the LED flash has become more intelligent, now supporting seven different levels of brightness that are automatically selected between based on the proximity of your subject. It’s a great example of how specs on paper aren’t the be-all and end-all of the overall device experience: HTC’s changes actually make the One X better to use as a camera.

Elsewhere, Sense 4.0 is still distinctively “HTC” in its design, but it’s a marked improvement over the increasingly stylized versions we’ve seen before. Widgets are pared back and cleaner, with no unnecessary animations, and the whole OS feels swifter and slicker. HTC has implemented a new multitasker system – triggered by one of the three dedicated touch-sensitive buttons – which shows angled preview panes of each app, similar to a CoverFlow album cover UI, though you can apparently switch to Ice Cream Sandwich’s default too.

We’ll have to save full benchmarking and the like until HTC One X review units are available, but suffice to say that the Tegra 3 smartphone feels swift and lag free, even with what is presumably non-final software. HTC has been ambitious – both with hardware and software – and it’s a challenger stance we’re pleased to see the company return to after so many flabby, me-too devices in 2011. With its sizable display and distinctive styling, the HTC One X probably isn’t the smartphone for everyone, but it’s a very welcome reboot all the same.

Both of these technologies will be given greater detail and live demonstrations without a doubt, but what they are here is basically thus: Voice over LTE, also known as VoLTE, will be demonstrated as seamless handover of voice calls between and LTE network and a circuit-switched WCDMA 3G network and back again. This demonstration will be done using Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) and will have HD quality voice – this is also known as AMR-WB, aka Adaptive Multi-Rate-Wideband. SRVCC is described as a technology which allows voice calls to move back and forth between 4G and 3G networks, both of these networks having existed side by side already since 4G first existed.

This first step will eventually lead carriers to move voice traffic from 3G to LTE networks, this allowing in turn the 3G spectrum to be used for LTE technology so there’s more than enough to go around for everybody! This technology relies on a single radio in the handset rather than a new one for each air interface. The Icera LTE modem takes care of this LTE VoIP and circuit-switched 3G trade-off on its own, this allowing smaller phone designs, lower power requirements, and better battery life in the end.

For gaming in this environment, NVIDIA will have their software defined radio (SDR) modem ready complete with all three radio technologies, 2G, 3G, and 4G, with the full range of handover capabilities that carriers will be using in the near future. In this case of course NVIDIA notes that it is the NVIDIA Icera modem that’s currently used “more than any other modem to validate LTE handover test cases designed to meet the requirements set by global standards organizations.”

NVIDIA will also be showing off how the Icera LTE modem utilizes their unique SDR technology, this allowing software upgradable functions for both OEMs and carriers with best-in-class power, high throughput, and an extremely small die size. Because of this also, NVIDIA is able to have the following wireless data technologies on their 2012-2013 roadmap, including the following: LTE FDD, TD-LTE, 42Mbps Dual Carrier and TD-SCDMA in addition to existing HSPA+, HSPA and 2G technologies.

Hot stuff for sweet connections! We’ll be checking out NVIDIA at MWC 2012, both of which you can follow along with through the portals linked here! [NVIDIA Tegra] and [MWC 2012] – hit em now!

This device is set to have three Android menu buttons along the bottom, each of them corresponding to one of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich buttons we’ve seen on-screen on the Galaxy Nexus in the past, one for back, one for home, and one to see a list of the apps you’ve currently got running. This device has been said to contain a microSD card slot (more than likely under the battery cover) and a feel not unlike what we’ve held in our hands in the HTC Sensation.

This device has been said the be launching alongside the HTC One V and the HTC One S, and also according to IT Pro Portal they’ll all be launched this weekend in Barcelona. Above you’ll see the HTC One X and below you’ll see the HTC One S photographed next to the device we saw launch last year, again, the HTC Sensation. Follow along with us all week starting this weekend for all the HTC news you can handle through our [MWC 2012 portal] – active now!

[via IT Pro Portal]

What this means for OEM partners is that they’ll be able to bring devices with both an NVIDIA processor AND an LTE modem to the market faster than ever before. Whenever a manufacturer wants to create a smartphone, for example, they’ve got to work with manufacturers of chips for the modem and a separate manufacturer of chips for their processor if they go with someone that isn’t Texas Instrument or Qualcomm – both of whom have integrated solutions on the market already. This NVIDIA deal will have the big green chip group running a similar business in the near future.

More information on how this solution will bring you, the consumer, the greatest and most powerful products as fast as any manufacturer is able to create them, we’ll let you in on the full knowledge this whole next week at Mobile World Congress 2012. Follow both our NVIDIA portal as well as our MWC 2012 portal starting right now!

[via NVIDIA]

Though there are four main cores to ever NVIDIA Tegra 3 SoC, there’s also a fifth chip that has the ability to perform tasks separate from the four. This architecture allows for exceptional processing power as well as excellent battery life because of how it functions. This system uses its main four CPU cores for such giant tasks as gaming, while the fifth core is only called upon when it’s just processing email or sleeping that needs to be done.

UPDATE – have a look at some awesome 4-PLUS-1 games on the way soon!

We’ve seen this process working wonderfully in the first device to be released with the NVIDIA Tegra 3, the ASUS Transformer Prime, a full review of which you can view here: with an extra review for the updated version here: Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade review. This architecture will be showing up more than once in devices at Mobile World Congress 2012, which you can follow in our own [MWC 2012 portal] all week long.

[via NVIDIA]

This device has the Tegra 3′s four main CPU cores and the fifth low-power drive bringing this processor and therefor this phone the world’s only smartphone-sized 4-plus-1 core-toting smartphone device on earth. This device also comes with no less than the newest version of Google’s own Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the newest version of the group’s world-class mobile operating system. The Optimus 4X has the ability to output video to HDMI via its own MHL port, DLNA support, and a brand new version of LG’s user interface over Android with as much customizability as you can handle.

This is both one of LG’s largest smartphones yet and one of if not THE first smartphone with a quad-core processor to be hitting the market worldwide. You’ll find that LG is coming on strong with this and the LG Optimus Vu at Mobile World Congress 2012. We’ll be at Mobile World Congress 2012 starting this Sunday and will certainly be running around all week looking for all things NVIDIA as well as LG, not to mention the rest of the mobile world at the world’s largest mobile convention of the year! See you in Spain!

I think we certainly have, why not? It’s always a good time to upgrade far beyond what you’ve just purchased a month ago, folks. Fujitsu is apparently preparing you for the next generation of superphones with a great partner, NVIDIA, the same group that dominated the 2012 landscape for dual-cores, and Ice Cream Sandwich is along for the ride as well – there’s nothing better than that! You’ll notice that this device has three physical buttons on the front, this implying that Fujitsu hasn’t abandoned the old ways yet, while ICS itself is ready to do away with these buttons for most other devices through the year.

We’re being told that this device may not be as thin as the ARROWS devices we’ve seen from the manufacturer recently, and that waterproofing may not be an option. This device has been tipped as having fantastically large battery life as well as a release date inside the second quarter of 2012 – but no mention of USA availability thus far.

In addition we’ve received an anonymous tip that fits in with the idea that Fujitsu will be bringing forth a set of devices, the phone listed above as well as a tablet that’s not only “thinner than ever before” but also toting an NVIDIA Tegra 3 as well. Will Fujitsu be bringing a tablet to face up against the $249 7-inch ASUS powerhouse revealed at CES? We’ll be looking for these devices to of course pop up during Mobile World Congress 2012 – stick with us for the whole show!

We’ll be covering everything mobile next week starting on Sunday and you can look for this device in the Fujitsu portal – be prepared for it!

In addition to the quad-core news – whose rumors you can also catch up with in the timeline at the end of this post – NVIDIA let loose news of an acquisition of a group called Icera. This group will allow NVIDIA to work on an integrated 3G and 4G LTE system-on-chip whose codename is currently simply Grey. This SoC will be shipping on modems “this year, hopefully sooner than later” – again says Jen Hsun Huang. This new chipset will allow NVIDIA to continue to compete against Qualcomm and their own soon to be revealed LTE chipsets in the near future.

This could be good news for smartphones hoping to grab some extra battery life out of their built-in systems – LTE device in particular still suffer from a bit of the ol’ connection drain woes. As far as which devices we’ll be seeing at Mobile World Congress 2012, well, it’s anybody’s guess, really – but here are a couple of good ones: HTC and LG. Have a peek at the timeline below to see the full spread of what MIGHT be coming soon.

[via NVIDIA]

NVIDIA has come strong to the show with not only a massively impressive first release of their chip on the Transformer Prime, but with detailed descriptions of how their processors work and why we should be jumping for joy at them. As for how excited we should be for Tegra 3 on smartphones, well, just look at the rumors! Just this morning we had another note come through on the HTC Edge, a device that will almost certainly be coming to the MWC 2012 stage with a Tegra 3 processor under the hood.

And you can bet we’ll be there at Mobile World Congress 2012 to bring you all of the NVIDIA action as it drops, including but not limited to phones, tablets, and straight up Tegra 3. You can bet there’s also going to be some LG smartphone action here as well – check the image above to get an idea of what that LG device might look like. Also watch the MWC 2012 and Tegra portals for more up to the minute updates about the whole show! Meanwhile check the power –

This device is set to be running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box as all good 2012 smartphones coming with Android should, so says the source leaking this image and the details that come with it. The rear facing and front facing camera sizes come as no surprise at 1.3 megapixels and 8 megapixels, and storage inside the device is said to be 16GB. Inside we’ve also got a 21Mbps HSPA for connectivity along with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

The battery on this monster is set to be a lovely 2000mAh and inside you’ll also find NFC capabilities. We’re expecting this device to make its debut next month at Mobile World Congress 2012, and we’ll be there LIVE to let you know how it goes. This device will likely be released early Summer, 2012.

[via PocketNow]

Now we don’t know exactly what to expect but we already have a pretty big idea. The Transformer Prime was the first NVIDIA Tegra 3 device to hit the streets and we are expecting a slew of them to invade this years CES. From the various leaks over the past month you should be expecting plenty. With a tablet already being available we are expecting smartphones to take a large portion of today’s event.

HTC has had a few leaks suggesting a superphone Tegra 3 powered device in the HTC Edge, then the Quattro has also been making the rounds. Acer, Lenovo, and more are all in line for some Tegra 3 love in early 2012 not to mention we’ve already received some hands-on with the Acer A700 1920 x 1200 quad-core tablet.

Check out timeline below for more details and links, then stay tuned for all the information coming from NVIDIA shortly. I’m getting NVIDIA green with envy.

Hardware

This device features a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, meaning it’ll be very very bright and has 480 x 800 pixel resolution. This crushes the mid-range competition for brightness and in most cases for resolution as well, but doesn’t quite match the Galaxy S II for either energy efficiency or, again, brightness. Thus is the difference between Super AMOLED and Super AMOLED Plus – though you won’t likely notice it unless you’ve got both phones in your hands at once.

This device has a relatively solid construction throughout, but when you do handle the phone often you’ll notice the slide-out action happening a little TOO readily, the power button’s placement on the side of the device making a strange bit of accidental flipping happening for your humble narrator more than once. Similarly there is a bit of a downfall on the back cover as it’s easily the thinnest piece of plastic Samsung has ever produced for a smartphone. Once it’s on though, you may well forget about how light it is. This device won’t win any awards for perfect toughness, let’s just say that.

The keyboard is OK, certainly not on the same level that HTC has gotten to with such hits as the recent T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide, but not quite as tightly knit and difficult to type with as the Motorola DROID 3. It lights up for nighttime typing, and as with all extendable keyboards, the whole unit becomes much easier to play racing games with – racing games such as the greatest racing game available for the mobile platform today, Asphault 6, and what do you know – there it is pre-installed!

Software

While the fact that this device does have a pretty decent display and a keyboard for those of you not quite ready to take the plunge with on-screen keyboards just yet, the real power lies in the fact that this handset employs the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor. While this processor may seem less powerful than some of its competitors as it is clocked in at 1GHz per CPU core, you’ll see the results in these benchmarks say otherwise.

The Tegra 2 processor also affords you access to an elite set of games otherwise not available to those without said processor. These games can be found in the NVIDIA Tegra Zone as seen both online and on device as well. This means you’ll be able to play Zen Pinball when its eventually released – yes!

As for the user interface, you’re using one of the newest versions of Samsung’s TouchWiz as introduced back when the Galaxy S II lineup was revealed for the USA. This is Samsung’s finest user interface over Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread yet, and your humble narrator has no complaints. Software is your usual set of Samsung and AT&T added applications as well as the Google standard fare including the Android Market, Gmail, and of course Maps.

Pro-tip: as with essentially all recent Samsung handsets, you can take a screenshot by holding down your home key and tapping your power key. Slick!

Camera

The camera is 8 megapixels powerful and capable of 720p video, and while it doesn’t have the massive amount of editing software built-in like HTC devices do, it does get the job done with some lovely results. Have a peek at a photo or two below and some 720p video as well, and mind the Target:

Battery

This device has a 1650 mAh sized battery inside and hasn’t lasted any less than 10 hours on a single charge for me thus far while using the device for email, web surfing, and playing the occasional game. Playing streaming videos fares not nearly so well at 4-6 hours, but you’ll likely be doing so with your MHL/HDMI converter cord (that you do have to buy separately) to output to your HDTV. That will have you charging at the same time as playing, so no worries!

Wrap-up

This device is surprisingly high quality. There were only two moments when I had my doubts, one of them being when I put the battery in for the first time since the back cover is so very very thin, and the other when I first started to hit the power button and realized I’d have to find a new way to hold the handset because the slide-out keyboard wasn’t held nearly as tight as it was on other recent keyboard phone models from other manufacturers. That said, once I got going, it all went well.

This certainly isn’t the Galaxy S II, but it’s pretty darn nice. Take a look at the brief comparisons in the videos above to other devices on AT&T right this moment, then see if you’ve got any other questions you’d like to ask and ask them in the comments below – we’ll be sure to answer!

This game is one in a series of games made by developers working directly with the team at NVIDIA to create masterpieces optimized specifically for the NVIDIA Tegra processor family. Have a look here at a bit if information on how NVIDIA worked with Zen Studios’ Creative Director Neil Sorens – this bit comes from a short interview done with Sorens posted in the Tegra Zone all the way back this summer in July:

“How easy was it to port your game over to Tegra 2?

We got Zen Pinball up and running very quickly, actually. NVIDIA’s been in the graphics business for a long time, so they know exactly what developers want. It was a very smooth process. They’re like “what can we do for you, how can we make things easier, here are some tablets, just go do what you do best and let us know if you need any help.” It’s been fantastic. On the Tegra platforms, it’s like working on another console. That’s basically what it is and we can do the same assets, same engines, and just get it on there quickly and everything will work. The game runs at 60 frames per second with full texture quality and full physics effects going one. In some ways, this is actually superior to what we have going on with the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. It’s super impressive.” – John Gaudiosi via Tegra

Now have a peek at how far they’ve gotten with this game thus far. I’ll mention it in the video again, but let it be clear here: this isn’t the final release, nor is it a release that’s near enough to release to review. What this is instead is a glimpse of the future, now!

The other game mentioned in the video is Pinball HD, a game you can check out here on SlashGear in a bit of news on how it’s up on Mac OS X (and iPad) or over on Android Community where your humble narrator gave it a full review on an Android tablet complete with Tegra 2.

We’ll be seeing this game SOON for Android devices with Tegra processors from NVIDIA. And of course, expect this game to work twice as nice on Tegra 3, NVIDIA’s quad-core processor coming inside 2011 to the front of the pack with the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, we guarantee!

Also inside this tablet is 1GB of RAM, 16GB internal storage, and a microSD card slot able to utilize up to a 32GB card. This device has a microUSB port, a microHDMI port, and of course is able to be dunked. You’ll see a video of this happening below, but until then, note that this tablet is thus far only set for Japan. What you’ll see for a USA release instead of a video like this is BRIGHT LIGHTS and flashing WORDS and all kinds of FIRE. Trust me on that one. Have a peek at this hands-on video:

The processor on this device is the same dual-core 1Ghz NVIDIA Tegra 2, a mightily well working chip in and of itself. Note that essentially every dual-core tablet with Android that came out inside 2011 had this same processor, including the hero device for Google’s Honeycomb platform, the Motorola XOOM. AGAIN UPDATE: this tablet has the Texas Instruments OMAP4430 dual-core processor, not NVIDIA’s Tegra 2. This information comes straight from Texas Instruments, while the incorrect information can be seen in the video below.

This of course doesn’t begin to add up against the other tablet we’ve seen this week, the Panasonic Toughpad A1 which appears very much to be impervious to most anything, not just H2O.

[via NotebookItalia]

NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chipset has been gone over in full detail by your humble narrator in two posts here on SlashGear just a few weeks ago in two posts, one on how there are actually [five cores, not just four], and another all about [Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing] aka vSMP. Note that back then NVIDIA had not yet revealed that the final market name for the processor would be “Tegra 3″ at the time these posts were published, instead still using the codename “Project Kal-El” to identify the chipset. The most important thing you should take away from these posts is this: your battery life will be better and the distribution of power needed by your processor cores will be handled more intelligently.

NVIDIA has provided a few videos that will explain again in some rather easy to process detail what we’re dealing with here in the Tegra 3. The first of these videos shows visually what cores use which amount of power as several different tasks are performed. Watch as a high-powered game uses all four cores while browsing a webpage might only use a single core. This is the power of Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing in action.

Next there’s a demonstration of an upcoming game that would never have been able to exist on a mobile platform if it hadn’t been for NVIDIA’s new chip architecture and the power of a quad-core chipset – along with NVIDIA’s twelve GPU cores of course. We had a look at this game back earlier this year in the first Glowball post – now we go underwater:

Finally there’s a lovely set of videos showing you exactly what it means for game developers and gamers to be working with the Tegra 3 chipset. The first video shows off how next-generation games are being made specifically for this chipset, developers working hand in hand with NVIDIA to optimize their games for the Tegra 3 so that gamers can get the most awesome experience in mobile history. Devour this, if you will:

You can also see several examples of the games in the video and how they’ve been improved in the Tegra 3 world. Riptide GP as well as Shadowgun have been reviewed and given hands-on videos by your humble narrator in the past – can’t wait for the enhanced visions! Next have a look at these games running side-by-side with their original versions. Make sure you’re sitting down, because you’re going to get pumped up.

Down to the frames per second, this new chipset will change the world you live in as far as gaming goes. Of course it doesn’t stop there, but in that gaming is one of the best ways to test a processor on this platform, one made with gaming in mind of course, you’ve got to appreciate the power. Have a peek at this tiny chart to see what we mean:

Then head over to the post from ASUS on what the very first hardware running the Tegra 3 will look like. It’s the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, a 10.1-inch tablet from the makers of the original Transformer, a device made to pummel the competition and usher in a whole new age in mobile computing. We look forward to the future, NVIDIA, bring on another year of complete and total annihilation of the competition!

It was the folks over at Tech2 that saw this first, they having tested their original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer out on the system, it showing up a bit lower on the list (see image below), with the same top runners winning the race. What you should take note of here is that the Transformer Prime has not only taken the leader spot, it’s broken the barrier set by AnTuTu at 10,000 points! That’s gigantic, that’s huge, it’s massive!

Of course as always you should note that comparing one device to another on a synthetic benchmarking system such as this can only be taken for so much, as each configuration is set up for different purposes and it’s not often that a setup is made JUST to beat out the rest in a benchmark test. A good example of a device that IS made to win is our pal Simms’ Nexus S device which you can see obliterating the competition over on Android Community with only a single core. That said, we’ve got to assume that this Kal-El aka Tegra 3 (if that’s what it ends up being called) device has not been tweaked to beat the system and is instead JUST that powerful.

Can’t wait to see what else the device will bring!

Having found himself in the Rockstar offices for an early look at Grand Theft Auto 3′s 10th anniversary edition, Rosenberg first warns us that the game is still in beta mode and things like frame rates are “still being perfected.” On the other hand, he does note that, believe it or not, “it’s immediately clear that this is a much better looking version of the game than most people played on their PS2s.” Sound like the re-up you were looking for? Rockstar has taken many of the high-resolution assets from the game’s PC release (later than the original PS2 version) and planted them here in the newest edition of the game. Newly created textures in items like signs and vehicles are amped up and are all working with fully 3D-modeled engines.

Everything in the game appears much more precise and detailed if one were to compare directly to the original release from 10 years ago, and now with the Kal-El quad (or penta)-core architecture, you can bet that this game will be all the better on a mobile landscape. Of course if you want to remain stationary while blowing off heads and crashing cars in the virtual world, you can also, again, plug in an Xbox 360 controller as Rosenberg did at Rockstar, this feature exclusive to Android for the moment. As far as how well the game plays on the iOS devices, Rosenberg only reported that the game looks great on the A5 chip.

Finally, Rockstar noted that there’s a possibility for a future patch (after release) that would add PC-like graphics sliders to the game – this feature possible for Android “at least” at first. ALSO for those of you wondering, there is no video nor are there photos available yet – top secret!

[via DigitalTrends]

What you’ll notice about this game right out of the box is that while there’s only a few controls, the game is certainly not simple. You’ll be solving puzzles, doing mini-hacks, targeting your enemy from yards away, and making sure you’re not fragged along the way. Like any good shooter you’ve got weapons falling on the ground for you to pick up and toss back at the enemy full force, you’ve got blood spewing from your guts whenever you get a bullet in the belly, and the entire game, unlike most good shooters – and it appears in SPITE of them too, is entirely touch-based.

This game sits you behind your main hero with you at an over-the-shoulder perspective, just far enough away to see the guns flogging the enemy in full HD. Pieces of the environment may well be falling away while you crouch behind them, enemies may well be 10 times the size of your own character’s body, and you might well find this to be one of the more difficult games you’ve ever played on Android, especially if you’re used to only console controllers.

You’ve been warned!

Find this game on the official NVIDIA Tegra Zone today : [Shadowgun download LIVE]

Look a whole lot different to you? What we know now is that this game is ready to become the next-level experience you’ve been waiting for on Android, and come late 2011, NVIDIA will only be bringing the fire again with their Quad-core chip the Tegra 3 – or is it Penta-core, or is it called Kal-El, or is it Superman?! We’ll just have to wait and see! Mobile computing to the rescue!

If you were here on the 5th of October you know that we’ve already gotten our hands on this miraculously entertaining third-person shooter for a full review of the near-complete build. Have a look at the full review post or simply look below for the video that comes with it to see what you’re in store for. Also note that we’ll have ANOTHER look at the game the day of release with the full build in place – not too much should be different, but you never know!

This is one of a suite of games released with optimization for Tegra devices in the past year, each of them made with the developers of the games and the Tegra 2 team at NVIDIA working together to make the greatest experience possible for the end product. Each of these games are listed in the Tegra Zone, a directory that’ll have you spitting slime over how awesome it is to own a dual-core processor from NVIDIA in an Android device.

Have a look at the Shadowgun game listing in the web-based Tegra Zone and notice who the top review is done by — none other than our sister site Android Community via Cory Gunther! Now we’ve gotta have an even BETTER review so as to steal that top spot back for ourselves for the final release!

For those of you that don’t know, the world’s first mobile super chip, that being the first dual-core processor sitting on a smartphone, was the NVIDIA Tegra 2. Internationally, this chip first sat on the LG Optimus 2X which eventually became the T-Mobile G2x here in the states, and the first smartphone here in the states with a dual core, the Motorola ATRIX, also had the NVIDIA Tegra 2. And the first tablet with a dual-core processor, the Motorola XOOM, also had an NVIDIA Tegra 2. You know what that means? I means NVIDIA basically beat everyone else to the punch. They also swarmed the world of Android in 2011, hitting a gigantic amount of devices, stomping all competitors of theirs in the dual-core market.

Read our post about Variable SMP for all the information you could possibly want about how the Tegra 3 works, that is four cores – or what’s that, five? Yes, five cores. The Tegra 3 will undoubtedly be called a quad-core processor, but you’ll be glad you read about how it’s actually got five CPU cores when it comes down to it. The video you see in this post should show you the lighter side of all this information – power here essentially means great performance and superior graphics – that’s all you need to know!

UPDATE: the final release version of this game is out now, check out our follow-up post and hands-on video once you get down reading about it here, then pick the game up in the market!

A third-person shooter is, for those of you that don’t know, a game in which you’re looking over the shoulder of the character that you control, using your controls to then fire all manner of projectile weapons (or in some cases, cutting weapons or even your fists,) at your enemy. Here we’re using our fists to jam on computer consoles to pass through doors and open locks while our trigger finger blasts enemies with nothing less than an Alien caliber pulse rifle-esque supergun. Our enemies are a set of mutated humanoids and their robot counterparts – without getting too much into the story, basically they’re all freakish and you wont have any trouble with your conscience for blasting them into pieces.

There IS a storyline, and you can read it in the hands-on video here if you please, and there IS a reason you’re on this planet with its industrial used-future look and hallways full of nasty customers, but heck, you know why you’re here. Your controls are simple and well-placed, this especially so since you can control where they sit. You’ve got your joystick, gun trigger, view and aim, reload gun button, gun switcher, and settings. Everything else you see there on the gray line below is a result of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 pushing its TouchWiz UX up in our face – forget it’s there for now.

You can move all of your controls around and indeed even the wherever-you-need-it joystick for moving your character can be set in one place if you want it. The game is single player, contains what Madfinger says is 5 hours of play, and contains multiple outcomes at the end depending on how you’ve played your cards. The game ISNT easy for a beginner, and there are three difficulty settings for even the most hardened of shooter-game experts.

You’ll be able to find this game in the Tegra Zone as well as on the Android Market immediately if not soon, just search for that unique word: SHADOWGUN. It’s the only one in there, I assure you. This version is optimized, again, for the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core chipset, and there WILL be an updated version for the quad-core Kal-El NVIDIA chipset come this winter. Exciting!

iPhone 4S

This is the newest device of the pack, it packing a lovely new A5 chip that, optimized to the max for this one single phone, will allow you to play such fantastic games as Infinity Blade II – see a preview of what’s to come in our review of the first in that series of games for iPad 2. This device will be released worldwide and on three of the four major US carriers this month in three models, the least expensive of these being $199 with 16GB storage inside. Some other nice neat new apps revealed at the iPhone event on October 4th were Cards physical greeting cards app and Find My Friends for GPS tracking of all your best buddies. There’s also some little additions to the iPhone line via iOS 5 like the camera shortcut on the lockscreen. Then there’s some real strange things like: Bluetooth 4.0, the lovely fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating on both the front and the back, three-axis gyro, and again, a global release on 100 carriers worldwide.

Learn all about the iPhone 4S in our full reveal guide as well as our hands-on look.

Samsung Galaxy S II

The Galaxy S II is one of the most popular Android devices in history. It’s sold over 10 MILLION units worldwide of its original version, and the new versions on AT&T and T-Mobile plus the EVO 4G Touch version are set to be massive sellers as well. This device runs the newest version of Android – as all the Android devices on this list do, but with a special user interface Samsung calls TouchWiz. This interface is the most updated version of what Samsung calls its most optimized interface for users using Android -and it’s quite nice, if I do say so myself, having one in my pocket right this second. Instead of working with the Apple Appstore, you’ll be using the Android Marketplace, one of the most popular app stores in the world after the Apple app store which, if I’m not mistaken, is still beating every other store by a longshot for legitimate checked-and-ready apps. The Samsung Galaxy S II comes in many shapes and sizes but, for the most part, always has the lovely Super AMOLED Plus display, Samsung’s sharpest and brightest in the world. This device comes with an 8 megapixel camera on the back, similar to the 8 megapixel camera the iPhone 4S is using, and another webcam-ready camera on the front, also similar to what the iPhone 4S is using.

This device, as is true of each of the other Android devices on this list, is a powerful choice, and will last you the 2 years you’ll have it on contract unless you’re the sort of person that always needs the most advanced handset around. For you I recommend not purchasing a smartphone at all, as sure enough, several months down the line, no matter what you’ve purchased, you’ll have been trumped by the newest technology.

You can check out our several reviews of this device here:
Samsung Galaxy S II original international edition
Samsung Galaxy S II AT&T version
Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch

HTC Sensation

The device known as the HTC Sensation is the culmination of HTC’s efforts to create the perfect phone, similar to what Apple has done with the iPhone and Samsung has done with their Galaxy line, here is where HTC puts it all on the line. You get nearly the newest version of HTC’s custom user interface Sense (currently only beat by the feminine device HTC Rhyme at the moment) and the most comfortable shape for a handset that your humble narrator has ever felt hit his palm. It’s shaped to please, ladies and gentlemen, and like the last two devices, this smartphone has the 8 megapixel camera on the back and a webcam-ready camera on the front.

Unlike the previous two devices, this smartphone is only available on T-Mobile here in the USA and on a broader market internationally. HTC generally releases their devices across the sea first, bringing them then to the USA market on one carrier at a time. Prices for this device are, once again, comparable to the first two smartphones.

Our reviews
T-Mobile Sensation 4G
HTC Sentsation original international edition

Motorola DROID BIONIC

The BIONIC is another dual-core device (like all devices on this list), this time in a device that also works on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. This is the only device on this list that can say that it’s got those kinds of upload and download speeds, and it’s also one of the most widely anticipated Android devices to have been released this year. It’s running Motorola’s newest UI over Android and is pushed as a device that can accomplish many things with its several docks and desktop-mode for advanced computing beyond that of a normal smartphone. Apple made fun of the camera on this device because it is said to be significantly slower in taking photos than the competition, meanwhile it has a similar 8 megapixel camera on the back and video chat capable camera on the front.

The DROID BIONIC is only carried by Verizon, and only here in the USA. This makes the device by far the smallest in distribution numbers, but does offer an exclusive sort of feel, if you know what I mean. It’s also got a bit of a curve to the edges of the glass, this making it, the G2x, and the Sensation each part of the curved Gorilla Glass club – strength and a lovely feel.

Review
DROID BIONIC

LG G2x

The LG G2x is, in its original form, the first smartphone in the world to hold a dual-core processor in it. It was called the Optimus 2X then, and it, like I mention above, has one of your humble narrator’s favorite display glasses in the world – a couple of large bends and this device is unique. Inside you’ll find the second most advanced Android operating system out of the box, but it’s instantly ungradable to the newest Gingerbread – as all the other Android devices are on this list. This device has the 8 megapixel camera on the back and the video chat capable camera on the front, and, like the DROID BIONIC and the Galaxy S II, has the ability to play videos via HDMI on your big screen HD TV. The iPhone 4S can do this in a similar way to the Galaxy S II, both of them requiring a special converter cord to do so.

Review
T-Mobile G2x from LG

Processors

Since the Apple processor and the rest of these Android-powering processors aren’t able to all really work on the same benchmark tests, we’ll just have to speak on what we’ve seen here. A dual-core processor on an Android device makes it capable of wiping the floor with all of their single-core counterparts, but unless you’re really ramming away on video and playing the highest-tech games, you’ll not notice a WHOLE LOT of difference in your daily activities. If you’re going to be using your device to play videos through your TV, it’d make a lot of sense to have a dual-core processor. If you’re going to be playing games like Riptide GP for Android, you’ll absolutely NEED a dual-core processor because it requires it.

That said, different processors are doing different things to pump themselves up for consumers – Qualcomm – whose chip sits in the HTC Sensation, recently announced their support for game developers in the Qualcomm Snapdragon Game Pack. Similarly, NVIDIA has a whole NVIDIA Tegra Zone of apps created with the developers to work specifically with their own Tegra 2 dual-core chip – these games are then only playable on NVIDIA-powered devices, including the G2x. Texas Instruments (on the DROID BIONIC) have been finding their way into several big-name devices of late including the Kindle Fire and is rumored to be part of the next Google hero phone Nexus Prime. Samsung sits in this pack with their own Exynos dual-core processor on the Galaxy S II – this processor has been known to beat out competing dual-core processors on benchmarks that are, admittedly, not that precise, but by a LOT in some cases. Finally there’s the A5 dual-core processor from Apple for their newest iPhone 4S, this is a processor that’s quite similar (if not basically identical) to the A5 processor sitting in the iPad 2, the most popular tablet-type mobile device in the world – and by the looks of it, it’ll be at least keeping up with the competition if not beating it due to the small library of devices it must be optimized for.

Anything else you’d like to know? You can see the full specs on the iPhone 4S by heading to our iPhone 4S Hands-on post, then for the rest you can see our http://device.ac/ device archive for the rest: Galaxy S II (AT&T and original), Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, LG G2x, DROID BIONIC, and the HTC Sensation. Let us know which one you’ll pick if you’re in the market!

I’m almost unsure of where to start I’m enjoying this phone so much. The Samsung Galaxy S II really is a pretty awesome smartphone. It has it all from a simple design that is sleek, thin and lightweight — while being extremely powerful and fast at the same time. For all the details you’ll need check out my hands-on and unboxing. We’ll start with the video hands-on overview below and then get into all the details shortly.

AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II hands-on

Hardware

The hardware we all know plenty about — plus was laid out in the video above but just in case here are a few more details. We have Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 1.2 GHz Samsung Exynos processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage under the hood. Optional micro-SD support for extra storage, 8 megapixel camera around the rear with LED flash and a 2 MP front shooter for video chatting and more. All of that neatly packed into an ultra lightweight and thin design.

On the front we have a 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus display with a 480 x 800 resolution. The screen is bright, vibrant, and extremely clear and really just looks better than anything else on the market thus far although the qHD displays are looking better and better. Shown in the images below you can see the AT&T branding, 2MP front camera, earpiece, as well as the four dedicated capacitive touch buttons.

Moving along to the left, right, and top of the device we have a very clean and simple design. No bright aluminum buttons or volume rockers, no weird textures on them either, just a plane jane black style. Many might like the aluminum accents some smartphones offer and I do too, but the Galaxy S II just has a simple and clean elegance to it. The only bezels present are the aluminum around the camera and the 3.5mm headphone jack up top.

Software

Here we have Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread and the latest Samsung Touch Wiz 4.0 to keep things pretty. With only a few slight changes to the entire Gingerbread look and feel this is a pretty stock device but features some added benefits. Nothing extremely crazy here like Sense UI, just a few added features and small changes. AT&T chose not to overdue it with bloatware either and for that — we thank you. We have a few dedicated AT&T applications and that is about it. The pre-installed apps other than AT&T specific things are Amazon Kindle, Live TV, Memo Pad, My Files, Qik, Quick Office, Words with Friends, and YP (Yellow Pages). Many additional apps such as another email app, video player, calender, file explorer, and a dairy application have been enhanced by Samsung’s Touchwiz to make the most of the 4.3″ display.

Samsung’s Touch Wiz also has a unique new feature with the just announced 4.0 for the Galaxy S II in the US and that is Motion Control. Once enabled, users can move icons on homescreens, zoom on images and webpages and more all by touching the screen and moving or panning the device rather than dragging multiple fingers. It’s quite neat and made moving icons from screen to screen extremely easy.

When first unveiled back in August our man Chris Burns was live at the Samsung event for some hands-on time with the SGSII. Below is a quick video of that coverage as well as a more detailed rundown of the changes to the software and user experience.

Performance

As usual we’ve ran a wide array of benchmarks and speedtests to see how this SGSII fends in the real world compared to other devices. Many other dual-core smartphones score well under 3000 in quadrant, especially stock devices with no tweaks or adjustments. The Samsung Galaxy S II with the in-house Exynos chip performs extremely well across all benchmarks and especially well in Quadrant. We’ve tried a few and were pleased to see the AT&T SGSII scored around 3800 in Quad — completely stock! Impressive if I don’t say so myself and you can really tell during day to day usage. My Sensation 4G gets around 2400 out of the box, big difference right?

Below are a few pictures showing just how well the SGSII also performs in Vellamo, and CF Bench, as well as a few quick tests on AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network (no 4G LTE here).

I know benchmarks don’t tell the entire story, and many users don’t care to read about them and would just like to know about real world usage. I’m happy to report the Galaxy S II is really one of the quickest, most fluid and easy to use phones I’ve had my hands on to date. I’ve experienced no delays or lag during browsing, gaming, benchmarks, loading multiple images in the gallery or anything. Even downloading about 10 app updates at a time the experience was barely touched and the overall performance was stellar. From adding icons to different pages, to flipping through homescreens and the application tray there is no gitters or choppy moments that I’ve experienced yet. This is truly a great performing smartphone that will meet any users demand.

Battery life and Camera

The AT&T SGSII comes with a 1650 mAh battery under the hood and while every user is different I’ve managed to have better than average battery life. From using this smartphone over the past week or so the battery lasts a bit longer than most. My Sensation 4G has a similarly sized battery and it just doesn’t manage to stay powered as long. Many reviewers of the original SGSII from Europe mentioned similar results where the SGSII battery life seems to outmatch rivaling handsets. This could be in part to changes made by Samsung, and another thing worth mentioning is the highly efficient AMOLED display, it seems to consume less power and really helps. Stand-by time was not fully tested but I left the device untouched for over 3 days and it remained around 25% when I finally plugged her in. While I’ve not done any video loop tests I have however played plenty of Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, used Google+ allll day, and browsed the web off and on throughout daily tasks and the phone holds up extremely well in the battery department. The Galaxy S II battery life is above average and will last most users more than the average work day.

As for the camera we have an 8 megapixel shooter and just like the battery life — the Galaxy S II seems better than the rest in terms of overall camera performance. I’ve snapped a few shots around the house and outside so you can see low light and standard lighting results. Many phones currently offer an 8 MP camera just like the DROID Bionic, but the slow shutter speed and mediocre performance makes the Samsung shooter just that much better. Here are a few pictured taken with the SGSII.

We’ve also tested the 1080p video capture and the Galaxy S II does impress here also. Very smooth and decent in regards to video capture although you must remember this is a phone, but they are getting better and better as they come. Below is a short video demo of the kids (my dogs) playing and messing around just for an idea of real world indoor video capture results. (Isn’t the puppy cute?)

Quick Comparison and Accessories

I’ve quickly snapped a few photos of the AT&T Galaxy S II sitting next to the big bad DROID Bionic by Motorola and Verizon Wireless. While both are comparable regarding specs, the SGSII doesn’t feature LTE but does however have a faster processor. I’ll break down the details later but for now here are a few pictures of the two just for an idea on size and thickness for those that may be wondering.

Also thanks to Chris Burns and our sister site Android Community we have a quick video showing the Galaxy S II accessories that Samsung will be releasing here in the U.S shortly although details on pricing and availability remain unknown. We have a car dock, home dock with additional battery and a desk dock shown in the video below

Galaxy S II accessories hands-on

Wrap-Up

The AT&T Galaxy S II is essentially the same exact SGSII we’ve seen, known, and loved for the past few months. With the same screen size and specs as the international version the only changes are a few to the UI, and the capacitive touch buttons below. Having a winning combination of being thin, light, fast, and affordable the Galaxy S II is a clear winner for the US as well as Europe and outside of the US sales have already passed 10 million globally. With the AT&T version being the closest U.S. Galaxy S II to the original, what more reason do you need to get this amazing smartphone?

Feel free to ask any questions in the comment section below and I’ll be sure to look them over and try to answer them as accurately as possible. More photos of the Galaxy S II can be seen below in the gallery. Look over the pictures, decide if this awesome smartphone is for you, and if so head down to a AT&T store on October 2nd and pick one up for just $199.

Invisible Companion

Each of the five, count them, five, not four, five cores are identical ARM Cortex A9 CPUs, each of them enabled and disables via aggressive power gating based on work load (aka when they’re needed, they’re fired up.) Unlike current Asynchronous SMP architectures, the Companion core is OS transparent. This means that the first four cores are not aware of the fifth, but automatically take advantage of it – this saving both software efforts and new coding requirements as it flows.

Active Standby mode

While you are walking to the bus, crossing a street, driving, or eating cereal in the morning, one must assume that you’re not on your smartphone. While you are not on your smartphone, processes are still running – this is what’s called “Active Standby” in this report by NVIDIA. While current processors all use one or more of their main cores to do tasks that are running at this time, tasks such as syncing and searching for Wi-fi networks, Kal-El uses its Companion core to work with lower frequencies and save power in a giant way.

Power Consumption

One of the most important points to a consumer in a smartphone or tablet is how long it’ll last without needing to get charged up. For this answer you must dig deep into the silicon, the powers consumption of a silicon device being thus: the sum of leakage power and dynamic power. Leakage power is determined by the silicon process technology used while dynamic power is determined by by silicon process technology and by operating voltages and frequencies.

To find the dynamic power piece of this equation, one must know that it is proportional to the operating frequency and also proportional to the square of the operating voltage. So you see:

Total Power = Leakage Power + Dynamic Power
and
Dynamic Power α Frequency x Voltage^2

At play, a device’s power consumption is based mostly on dynamic power consumption, while at rest, power consumption is mostly based on leakage power.

So the difference, again, between the four main cores and the Companion core on Project Kal-El is the power process technology on which it was built: the fifth CPU was built on a low power process technology while the other four were built on a high power process technology. This results in two different monsters:

Fast Process = Optimized for high frequency operation, but higher leakage
Low Power Process = Operates at lower frequency with lower leakage

Note again the truth about Kal-El, as provided by NVIDIA:

NVIDIA’s Project Kal-El is the world’s first mobile SoC device to implement a patented Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP) technology that not only minimizes active standby state power consumption, but also delivers on-demand maximum quad core performance. In addition to four main Cortex A9 high-performance CPU cores, Kal-El has a fifth low power, low leakage Cortex A9 CPU core called the ‘Companion’ CPU core that is optimized to minimize active standby state power consumption, and handle less demanding processing tasks.

Sounds beefy, pops!

Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) and CPU Hot-Plug management software

Two more technologies used in NVIDIA’s project Kal-El to intelligently manage workload distribution between the five cores are DVFS and their CPU Hot-Plug management software. These technologies work based on application and operating system requirements, and do not require any sort of special mods to the operating system to work.

Companion Core

The Companion core has the same internal architecture as the rest of the Cortex A9 CPU cores but is designed on a low power process technology which then caps out the core at 500 MHz. This core also delivers higher performance per watt than than the rest of the cores at operating frequencies below 500 MHz. Different cores for different chores.

Activating Cores

As the main four CPU cores are made to scale up to high operating frequencies at lower operating voltage ranges, they’re therefor able to deliver high performance without major dynamic power consumption. As higher performance is needed, more power is needed – and as this trade-off increases as a fast rate with the Companion core, it increases relatively gradually with the Main Cores. You can see this situation taking place in the chart below. Once you need a certain amount of performance, your Companion core is shut off and your Main Cores are turned on, they being the main guns until Max quad core performance is reached.

A general core activation chart has been whipped up here by NVIDIA to show how the CPU Governor and CPU management logic works in general with basic examples. As more demanding apps and processes are activated, more cores are turned on. Simple stuff, really.

Architectural Advantage

Cacheing information is made easy by the fact that the Companion core and the main cores are never active at the same time, this allowing the system to use the same L2 cache for all of it. The cache is programmed to return data to both the Companion and the main cores in the same number of nanoseconds, though more main core cycles end up taking place than Companion core cycles because the main cores run at a higher frequency.

vSMP technology maintains synchronous operating frequency on all active cores so that CPU management logic has a completely seamless transition not visible by the user in the least. CPU cores running at asynchronous frequencies run the risk of slow transitions and other OS scheduling inefficiencies – don’t get caught in the bind!

In contrast with the whoever-needs-in model vSMP uses, other processor solutions for power consumption include only a single voltage rail used for all cores, this then requiring each core to run at the voltage required by the fastest core. vSMP does away with this by separating each core. Don’t need the power? Don’t use it!

NVIDIA has implemented advanced circuits and logic as well to enable high speed switching efficiency. The NVIDIA team reports that switching time, including time to switch cores within the chip and the time to completely stabilize voltage rails (for the activated core or cores) is less than 2 milliseconds – this amount of time of course impossible to recognize by the average human.

Power Advantage

The vSMP technology included in NVIDIA Project Kal-El enables and disables CPU cores on the fly depending on what’s needed to attain user goals. NVIDIA has provided a chart of “power savings” as calculated between their original NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor and the brand new quad-core NVIDIA Project Kal-El. I thin you’ll see the superiority instantly. NVIDIA adds: “Power measured as a sum of application processor power and DRAM power after normalizing for other system variables. LP0 is the lowest power state of the respective Tegra devices.”

NVIDIA reminds us that what makes NVIDIA Project Kal-El dual-core processors so great is that even though there are more cores than ever, there’s also less power consumed than ever. Both Project Kal-El (twice, once with different core clocking) and a couple of competitor cores are compared. NVIDIA takes contestant number one and body slams it then takes contestant two and suplexes it. Destruction!

You’ll also notice some Coremark scores in there. These are also shown in the two charts below, power and performance compared and scored galore.

More Info

For more information straight from NVIDIA, hit up their collection of Whitepapers, intense write-ups where you’ll get everything that you need. The official NVIDIA blog has more information as well. Also check out the other Kal-El post we’ve got up today NVIDIA expands on Project Kal-El, adds a fifth core – NVIDIA has heat vision and super strength!

Back Story

A little bit more information about Kal-El before we continue: first, Qualcomm says “we’re not worried about [it]“, then we hear that the Asus Eee Pad Transformer 2 would be likely for the hero device for Kal-El, the quad core processor rumored to be likely for a 2011 holiday season release. You should know that I and we have declared 2011 to be the year of NVIDIA dominating Android Superphones and tablets, that one of the first Kal-El, and that NVIDIA has promised developer support for the Windows 8 platform for anyone willing to work to optimize their apps and games for the Kal-El quad core environment.

Also, on a separate note, you can get more information on NVIDIA’s GPU roadmap in a post from early August, 2011.

Dual to quad

Now today we get to see NVIDIA explaining what it means to have a quad core processor working in the mobile environment. What Project Kal-El was spawned from was the success of the Tegra 2 dual-core platform which, before production, was assumed to be a power-hungry hog for all the benefits is presented. Instead, because less power was needed to power two cores than was needed to power one, (this discussed in the White Paper entitled “Benefit of Multiple CPU cores in Mobile Devices” [.PDF]), NVIDIA went another step down the rabbit hole and brought out 4 cores.

vSMP and an extra, fifth, core

Project Kal-El works with a new Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing technology, also known as vSMP. As NVIDIA notes today for the first time, vSMP includes a fifth CPU core called the “Companion” core that’s built using a “special low power silicon process” which works on tasks at a low frequency – this works well for active standby mode, music playback, and video playback. The other main four cores are made in a more standard silicon process which is able to reach much higher frequencies. Each of these five cores is an identical ARM Cortex A9 CPU that’s individually enabled and disabled based on work load.

Higher Performance per Watt and Lower Power Consumption

Believe it or not, the quad core processor consumes less power and provides higher performance per watt than dual core processors AND single core processors. Because a quad core processor is able to share workload between multiple cores instead of rocking it all out on one, the work gets done faster and the workload doesn’t hit any one core with every bit of a task – this compared to any device with less cores shows the benefit of the multiple cores the same way five guys can make five burgers faster than one guy can make five burgers, and they’re all a lot less greasy than that one guy would have been.

Faster Web Page Loading Time

Two modern web browsers at least, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, are optimized for use with multi-core processors. Each tab on Chrome is a separate process and each process manages its own threads. The chat you see below shows CPU percentage used over an amount of time as four different webpages are loaded. Each core takes processes from tabs separately, all four cores working concurrently, getting the job done faster, quite simply, when it comes right down to it.

Moonbat Benchmark also shows off the four cores by showing how fast a processor processes Javascript, contending against a dual core processor for kicks. Moonbat here shows an almost 50% increase in performance compared to the provided dual core CPU.

Demanding Applications of the Future

High performance doesn’t let itself shine here in the quad-core world unless it needs to shine. Therefor NVIDIA works with developers to create games that make full use of their ultra-powerful SoCs. NVIDIA has provided here a list of future possibilities for apps that’ll utilize the quad-core landscape:

• High quality video editing
• Image processing
• Audio/video transcoding
• Physics simulations
• Numerous productivity apps
• Many forms of location-aware computing
• Facial recognition
• 3D stereo games and applications
• Virus scans
• File compression

Next there’s Coremark, a CPU benchmark which shows CPU work across intensive multimedia applications. Here each of several of the top dual-core brands are compared to quad core Kal-El. You’ll find that Kal-El delivers almost two times the performance of dual core processors, this happening across the board (with Texas Instruments’ OMAP 4 coming in second, if you’d like to know, but not by a long shot.)

Linpack is another benchmark the folks at NVIDIA run, here showing the difference between, interestingly enough, a dual core Project Kal-El processor and a full quad core processor (with, again, all four cores turned on instead of just the two.) You’ll find that the quad core processor wins by another long-shot.

Gaming

Most of the best game engines out there, Unreal 3.0, Id Tech 5 and Frostbite, are already multi-threaded and made for multi-core processors. Game engines are currently trending toward task-processing models with the sizes of individual jobs being reduced while number of threads is increased. Real-Time Physics and Rual-Time Texture Generation are but two tools used by the quad core platform to out-perform all competition.

Real-time Physics and Dynamic Texture Generation

With the power of four cores behind a user, they may turn to apps that create the environment in which they live AS they go about living. What I mean by this is, basically, if you’re playing Glowball, the textures, reactions to events, and physics change as you advance through the game, processed in real-time. Gaming performance speedup shown between the dual core Tegra 2 and the quad core Project Kal-El is plain to see on several different quad core utilizing games.

The game you want to play closest attention to here is Glowball as NVIDIA has already provided us with a look at the game which is yet unreleased and has shown us what quad core is truly and impressively capable of. Real time created environment created by you as you advance through it. Almost like you are processor god! The same goes for real time physics processed on the fly – if you don’t need it to start the game up right after you download it, you don’t need to include it.

Glowball is a game that for now just acts as a reference point for Kal-El. In the future it will be released as a full game for the masses.

One example of not needing all the information loaded by your game each time it loads is this: while the Windmill game (pictured above) generates texturess and racks up a 300 MB data limit, all of this using only a 900 KB base texture set. This means that a game capable of delivering 300 MB of graphics can also have those graphics, as they’re generated, with only 1 MB to start when you pick the device up from the store. What store would that be? We’ll see soon enough!

More Info

You can look into more information about Kal-El by hitting our big portal button or you can hit up NVIDIA’s lovely collection of Whitepapers where all your questions will be answered. You can check out the NVIDIA blog for more information as well.

Note before we go on that the processor inside the Nexus S is a Samsung Hummingbird while the XOOM features the NVIDIA Tegra 2. Inside most recently a report coming from a manufacturer in India, we can surmise that the next processor group Google will be teaming with will be Texas Instruments for their OMAP4 SoC. That same report places the release date for Ice Cream Sandwich to be late October. We’re aware of some chassis specs on this device due to a tipster leak as well as that Samsung will likely host the device known as Nexus Prime because of a pre-fab support page hosted at Samsung – this came in addition to a hidden code at Samsung using the same name: Nexus Prime.

The tipster just mentioned said that the device would have a 4.65-inch display with HD resolution, that the display glass would be curved like the Nexus S, and that the device at whole would be as thin as 8.8mm with a metal chassis. This tipster also mentioned that this device would be called the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. At this point we can also assume that this device will feature NFC capabilities the same as the Nexus S since Google Wallet launches this week in the USA.

There’s more word from late August that says Verizon has no Galaxy S II because they wanted a DROID PRIME exclusive instead. Based on information from an unnamed Droid Guy source, the PRIME, without the DROID bit on it quite yet, is completely separate from the Nexus, this telling us that the NEXUS PRIME is a name meant to misdirect our attention. This source was said to be testing the HTC Vigor as well as the Prime, saying that the Vigor was a better phone, especially since neither of them were running vanilla-flavored Android.

Another bit of possible misdirection was the legal paperwork sent out to some sites in late August noting the name Nexus Prime again, saying they had code for the device before they should have. Mid-August had us once again thinking the Samsung Nexus Prime would be packing Ice Cream Sandwich and coming out in October, while Andy Rubin assured us right after the Motorola deal with Google that the Nexus on Motorola was not a lock-in.

As far as Ice Cream Sandwich goes, we’ve seen what’s very possibly an early look at the face of the new mobile OS as it sat on a Nexus S, and as mentioned above, Texas Instruments is all but a lock in for a big collaboration with Google for Ice Cream Sandwich, regardless of what smartphone manufacturer steps up to provide the chassis.

What do you think? Is there a solid device or three in there? Something Ice Cream Sandwich this way comes?

Also remember to hit up our earlier guide for this device, the Nexus 4G as it was known then, from a few weeks ago.

Lets start by taking a swipe at that hardware: what does it mean to be using a Series 7 Samsung Slate, the one we’re seeing in the review posted in the first paragraph of this column, here out in the wild? We saw this device working with Samsung’s Central Station monitor in NYC just a couple days ago. This was done by plugging a USB dongle into the device, tapping one or two “OK” buttons, and poof! Instant mirroring to the bigger monitor.

This works with Android tablets as well, and works with any sort of device with a full-sized USB port. The iPad will not work with this setup. As with most things on the iPad, Apple must first provide an approved cord and port before this situation will work. That said, Apple does have a lovely splitter cord out there that allows you to both plug into the wall for power and plug into any TV with an HDMI cord. Still wired, but definitely HD.

Next we must speak a bit on what the difference between 7 and 8 is. One number makes all the difference when it comes to optimizing an operating system for a tablet. Have a look at an analysis by Robert Breza which suggests that Windows 8 tablets will capture a 15% tablet market share by 2014. That’s far from crushing the iPad, but considering that the Windows 7 tablet market is all but nonexistent, this is certainly significant. Then there’s Flash – reports have it that Windows 8 will focus on HTML5 instead of “legacy” Flash, this riding right alongside news that Adobe will soon be bringing Flash to iOS – Adobe responded by saying that they expected the desktop version of Windows 8 will support Flash just fine and that they’re not worried about a future with no Windows 8 tablet-based Flash.

Next, consider the brand power of the Xbox. Microsoft has already been speaking about Xbox LIVE on Windows 8 and it wouldn’t be absurd to think that these W8 tablets will soon work well with Xbox devices, as gamepads, as controllers for media, whatever you can imagine. Xbox games will also more than likely be able to be played in one way or another on Windows 8 tablets, certainly scoreboards and the same interactivity offered with Xbox LIVE on Windows Phone.

The folks at NVIDIA have been forthcoming now about Kal-El running on Windows 8 tablets, this bringing the already popular on Android (and PCs, of course), processor company to another platform set to compete with Apple. Like Apple, if I may be so bold, NVIDIA offers a set (miniature in comparison, but still,) of apps that work only on its hardware. You can find more information on the NVIDIA Tegra Zone by heading to our Tegra Zone hands-on post and know the truth about some of the most powerful games on Android tablets. That said, note that the vast majority of Android tablets with dual-core processors are running NVIDIA, read 2011 The Year of NVIDIA dominating Android Superphones and tablets for more information. In addition, NVIDIA is offering a full support program for developers similar to what they’ve got in place for Android at the moment.

On the first night that Windows 8 was available for download, a supposed 500,000 downloads were recorded. Apple does not release information on such numbers, but we expect that since iOS updates are now pushed to devices, the numbers are quite generous. Meanwhile we should also consider the following fact for long-term evolution of the platform: Windows 8 supports all apps that have worked in the past for Windows 7. This means, for example, your Windows 8 tablet will be able to run Photoshop without a problem. That said, the Apple App Store has always been in a better position than competitors in regards to app piracy, while PC apps have been pirated rampantly for quite a few years now.

You’ve got to check out a column at this point by Chris Davies entitled Windows 8 proves there’s more to tablets than iPad. There you’ll see a whole different perspective on how the tablet market may be unfolding.

The first Windows 8 PC was given out for free to 5,000 developers at Microsoft BUILD, this giving the platform a boost in regards to app development, or so they would hope. If you’ll take a look at the analysis column your humble narrator wrote on the day of release, Windows 8, Microsoft’s Great Touch-based Hope, you’ll see that I do have some big confidence in that the platform will perform at least well enough to send Windows into an upward trend in consumers. You can also see our Windows 8 Complete Guide for all the information you might need on the OS as a whole.

Now will the Windows 8 tablet ecosystem have a chance at knocking the iPad out of its tablet-dominant position? I really don’t think that the iPad has dominance over the tablet market – it’s not a tablet! Apple will never tell you that they’ve got a tablet for sale, they’ve got an iPad for sale. As Chris Davies will tell you, not everyone loves the iPad and, believe it or not, some people purchase tablet computers just so they can run Android, even if they have to hack them to get it. US retailer Best Buy is taking tablets seriously with a massive floor setting – Android clearly dominates the floor with sheer numbers.

If the Windows 8 tablet is able to carve out another niche the way the iPad has, it will sell well. The reason the iPad sells well is that people don’t go shopping for a tablet, they go shopping for an iPad. If people realize they can get a tablet version of their PC running Windows and they see this as the easier choice before re-learning another OS, iOS or Android (or maybe even BlackBerry), Microsoft will have a winner on their hands.

Can we expect both Kal-El Windows 8 notebooks and tablets in the near future? I think its pretty clear that we can! NVIDIA lets us know that they’ve got robust tools, SDKs, utilities, samples, and several partridges in pear trees ready for developer use, and with the developer copies of Windows 8 already launching on September 13th, we can go ahead and assume that the Kal-El chipset will be out sooner than later. Training and education were also listed by NVIDIA as perks of working with them to develop for Windows 8 devices.

Epic Games even had a bit to say about the program, EPIC and NVIDIA being good buddies and having worked together for over 10 years now – we can expect some rather fantastic games from this team in the future without a doubt on Windows 8.

“For over a decade, Epic and NVIDIA have worked closely together to ensure that Unreal Engine takes advantage of state-of-the-art GPU technologies. From the incredible DirectX 11 and PhysX effects in Epic’s Samaritan demo to the eye-popping 3D Vision experience in Bulletstorm, our engineers have always enjoyed collaborating with NVIDIA. NVIDIA’s developer support is the gold standard for chip makers. We’re excited by the announcement of their developer program and look forward to a continued partnership and to making the best games on the planet.”

Speaking from an Android perspective, I can tell you that NVIDIA will bring the fire, optimizing games to the tip top for Windows 8 systems and guiding us in with big bright lights that say “SUPER AWESOME” and so forth. Get all the information you need on NVIDIA in our Tegra Super Phones and Tablets portal and get pumped up about the future!