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 –

The Edge is believed to be at the pinnacle of HTC’s new “Hero Device” strategy, as the company attempts to break away from the quantity-over-quality strategy that saw it lose market share in 2011. HTC has also formed a new “HTC Studio” division, bringing together key engineering, design, software and other expertise to focus on polished phones and tablets, along with the flexibility to look beyond current bosom-buddy Qualcomm for its chip supplies.

Companies opting for Tegra 2 last year saw their dual-core Android phones hit the market well in advance of HTC’s Qualcomm-based dual-cores, leaving the firm on the back foot in marketing terms at least. NVIDIA’s graphics expertise is also cited by the sources as of key interest to HTC.

HTC is expected to launch a new tablet early in 2012, in addition to phones, though it remains to be seen if the company will use Tegra 3 for that as well as the Edge. Meanwhile LG and others are already believed to have committed to NVIDIA’s chip.

Enter German website Tablet Test, which has listed a price of €549 for the entry-level 16 GB version of the device and €749 for the 64 GB model. In American currency, that works out to around $719 and $981, respectively. These are admittedly a bit steep, but the power that comes packed in these monstrous devices is worth it. The question is whether or not they’ll sell.

Obviously these are not official prices. Acer hasn’t confirmed pricing in any territory yet. To that end, it also hasn’t confirmed a release date. However, the company has slated a vague second quarter time frame. The A700 is perhaps Acer’s biggest push into the tablet market to date, and there are many eyes wondering how it will fare.

[via Tablet Test]

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]

This device runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box and totes the fabulous NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Have a peek at our full review of the Transformer Prime to see what this device packs aside from the panel, it also an IPS display meaning its so bright that it’ll bust your eyeballs out. The best example we’ve got of this happening is Shadowgun running here at native resolution, that being WUXGA Full HD 1920 x 1200 – powerful!

NOTE here that the device is likely simply going to be marketed as the Transformer 700 Series instead of the TF700 or TF700T you’ve heard of in the past.

Additional features that we dont go too far into in the hands-on video are SuperNote app – this allowing you to take screenshots and insert photos, videos, and audio recordings along with maps and more to take all the inclusive notes you could ever want. The camera on the back is still that powerful 8 megapixel shooter with LED flash, back-illuminated CMOS sensor, and F/2.4 aperture. Audio is provided by ASUS SonicMaster technology too – it’s no less than deliciously soundtastic.

This version of Splashtop is called Splashtop THD, that meaning you’ve got a special version made specifically for the Tegra platform. This app will work only with Tegra processors, and will run more than just Skyrim. What NVIDIA had open was a full working version of Widows 7 as running through Splashtop from a PC they had connected to the same wi-fi network – and again, it works, it really works.

Have a peek at the regular version of Splashtop right now on the Android Market, check out our review of the Transformer Prime, and connect the two soon with Splashtop THD. Tegra 3 has a whole new arena to play in. We’ll be waiting!

While the specifications matter a lot, we’ve got the best of the best right here in the price: a 7-inch tablet that runs the newest version of Android WITHOUT a bunch of junk over the top (you know who you are) and all of it for cheap! This tablet is the next generation of cheap tablet and it’s not junk like the rest – it’s top of the line. Everything we’ve seen Tegra 3 do in the past, this device does it to. That includes playing multiplayer Shadowgun.

The folks at NVIDIA have come correct with their offering today, and ASUS is high fiving them all the way. Does this look like the masterpiece you’ve been looking for, Android lovers? We’ll certainly be enjoying reviewing it soon! Until then – we’ll be bringing you some hands-on pics and video this week!

Also note here in the timeline that we’ve seen the name “MeMO” before in a few different form factors – ASUS do you have more MeMOs up your sleeve? We’ll find out soon!

For the tablets, Huang noted that a big moment in Android was the moment it was revealed that Gingerbread and Honeycomb were combined in Ice Cream Sandwich. All the devices now, he reminds us, are in one single platform. Content developers are who win here, said Huang, a collection of Android devices replacing the separated world of tablets and smartphones cut in two. To show this all off, he brought out an ASUS Transformer Prime with Ice Cream Sandwich running hot. This tablet was then connected to HDMI and projected to a gigantic story-high screen, it showing off some immense high definition.

He also broke out an app by the name of Snapseed, it also shown as the “iPad App of the Year” on the big screen. Manuel Wille of Nik Software – the creators of Snapseed – stepped on stage and showed off how their image display and editing software works fabulously well on the Transformer Prime – especially with Ice Cream Sandwich. Purely touch UI, your fingers moving your photos details around without so much as a double thought. Effects are applied in real-time as well, this able to work due to the power of the quad-core processor – effects such as this only able to work on desktop before.

Huang next showed off Riptide GP working with a game controller, full HD and effects once again. This game controller working without a hitch – as we’ve seen it work in the past as well. Fun times!

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.

What this device essentially represents is the next generation 10-inch tablet for Android. It’s display is massively impressive, working “like” IPS, they note, but delivering such HD quality that “Hollywood wont like it.” How about that? Look like the tablet for you inside the second half of 2012?

This device has been previously leaked just last month, and all of the specs appear to have stuck: a gigantic 9,800 mAh battery, back-facing 5 megapixel camera, micro USB and microHDMI ports under the lovely little cover on the side, power port near the power button on the left-top, and a cool stylized back. This looks to be a definite step up in all categories compared to Acer’s last effort, especially int he display department, but twice as nice with both Ice Cream Sandwich and quad core under the hood. Lookin good, Acer!

“Tegra 3 isn’t concerning us” he said, referring to the NVIDIA chipset found inside the ASUS Transformer Prime and other incoming Android slates. “There are lots of smart people in the world but what we’re going to focus on is product roadmaps that help our manufacturing partners not just single use products … I could go away and make something brilliant with Tegra 3, but you’re going to see hundreds of [Snapdragon] S4 devices in the marketplace.”

The ambitious approach isn’t new from Qualcomm, though the company still remains behind when it comes to pure core count. Qualcomm’s quadcore S4 chipsets, like the 28nm MSM8960, will initially drop in dualcore form, with quadcores on the roadmap later.

Qualcomm has previously argued its design strategy by pointing out that – unlike NVIDIA or Texas Instruments, for instance – the company designs its own ARM-based cores. That allows it to choose its own balance between performance and energy efficiency; as Chandhok said, “we have a design point for mobility that we think is different from what others focus upon.” Whether it can convince customers to look beyond pure core-count and dig deep into actual abilities remains to be seen.

Chidori fighter

While I’m not really sure what to call this game, as technically it does not have a name at the moment, I can tell you that it’s a fighting game made on the Chidori platform. What Chidori does is act as a conduit between game developers and their desire to have their games on multiple platforms right out of the box. Chidori as a collective aims to provide developers with the tools they need to make this happen, and with Tegra 3 they’ve optimized their engine for future developers so they might make the most advanced games in the mobile space with precision and grace.

In this demonstration you’ll see a very unfinished fighting game made inside the Chidori engine environment, complete with on-screen controls and a handful of punch and kick moves. Notice in the upper left-hand corner that there are four green bars moving back and forth as the gameplay progresses – this is a basic look at how each of the four main cores on the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor are being utilized.

Glowball

This game first appeared in a demonstration of what was then called Project Kal-El earlier this year – this project eventually became known as Tegra 3, so you know this game is made to be more than just optimized for this space. Glowball’s main intent is to show off the capabilities of the NVIDIA quad-core processor, allowing you to see each of its magnificent effects off and on live as you play.

There’s also a set of goals you can accomplish in this game, like hitting all the jack in the boxes, but fah! It’s all about the rolling around and having a great time with live-rendered effects. This is the only game of the three in this post that will be available right away when you pick up your Transformer Prime later this month.

Bladeslinger

When you enter the world of Bladeslinger, you should know right off the bat that this is no Cowboys and Aliens. It’s no Infinity Blade either, and it’s certainly not Shadowgun. Instead it’s a combination of elements from each of those franchises, punched together to make you a cowboy with a knife attached to your gun and a mission to destroy the monster infestation upon you. You’ll be hacking and slashing away as well as blasting this hoard in the face all the live-long day.

This game is in development at the moment and will be available inside the first half of 2012 from what we can tell thus far. Until then you’ll do well to keep massacring the radiated beasts in, again, Shadowgun, until the filth is no more. Also meanwhile you should go ahead and check out our full review of the ASUS Transformer Prime to see what you’re missing – get the purple — I mean, Amethyst Gray version! Clearly superior over that alcohol-flavored alternative.

BONUS: Don’t forget about our hands-on with the games Riptide GP and Shadowgun in some battle videos between the Transformer Prime and the iPad 2 – let it begin!

Hardware

The magic in this device is not only in its keyboard dock, but once you get a taste of the ta on its own, its hard to resist the desire to own what basically amounts to the other half of it. Battery life essentially doubles when you’ve got both pieces and with this connection you’ve got the next generation of device in your hands today: a notebook with a touchscreen. Of course to make it all worth it, you’ve got to have an operating system that’ll back it all up – we’ll chat about that a bit more in the Software portion of this review. For now, have a peek at this very clean, modern looking bit of equipment:

Now you don’t HAVE to pick up the keyboard dock for this tablet, as all the processor power does lie inside the tablet bit itself. I’m simply not going to begin going into the supposed “limited app environment” that Android has in this review because I’m of the opinion (through practice) that if you want your device to do something, there’s a developer out there who wanted the same thing and made an app for it. Because of this, the tablet you’re looking at is easily one of the top 5 tablet computers on the market today. Because I’m a fan of Android and am more interested in the development of this operating system than any of the other mobile platforms, I would at this moment choose this tablet above all others, and not least of all because it’s gorgeous to behold.

Circles upon circles carved in a royal shade of metal around the entirety of the back of the tablet with the massive fact showing itself to be entirely Gorilla Glass, flat from the center all the way to the edges. The only marking you’ll find on either the back or the front is the lovely ASUS logo which is more than easy on the eyes, it’s downright well designed. The lightness of the tablet is balanced perfectly well with how weighty it must be to convince your humble narrator that it’s not going to bust if I drop it. In fact there’s no way I’ll be able to break this tablet with my bear hands unless I toss it off a building – though you won’t see me attempting this any time soon.

The keyboard dock has been sent to us to review in a box right alongside the tablet itself, and indeed it does belong with the tablet – let me reiterate: this isn’t a tablet, it’s a collapsible notebook. Though I cannot yet see this as a total replacement for the MacBook Air (or whatever else you folks are using to replace that luxury on the PC side), it is an excellent option for those of you wishing to work in a brand new environment where Android is still your system and your screen is touchable.

You’ll find that switching between the tablet and the keyboard-attached amalgamation is quick, simple, and judging by the latch on this monster, the whole thing is held quite securely in place for the long haul. Don’t expect to be getting the thing out of there with one hand, but plugging it in with one hand is certainly doable. And get this: in this (and the orignal Transformer) is the first place you’ve got a notebook that takes photographs from its back, and not just terrible photographs, nice ones.

As far as the other side goes, the inside – for the fellow who asked: there are two little rubber bumpers on the keyboard side that hold the display away from the surface, but the Gorilla glass wouldn’t have to worry about getting scratched either way because Gorilla Glass is more than tough enough to resist such smooth foe. Have a look here at a close-up view of the keyboard in all its glory in hands-on video Two:

The hinge is strong enough to be relatively tough to move when it doesn’t have the tablet plugged in, and the whole rig is difficult to open up when attached if you’re holding a baby in your other arm. I guarantee you I’ve tried it. This of course means that the connected keyboard/tablet combo wont come flying open accidentally by any means. Like the rest of the sections you’re about to read, know that anything you’d like to know about that I haven’t covered here is more than open to discussion below: ask any question you wish and I shall respond, your wish is my tap and click!

Display

In this tablet you’re going to find the lightest whites, the darkest blacks, and the brightest display with its Super IPS+ mode with over 600 nits (a nit is a unit of visible-light intensity, just so you know) — that compared to the iPad 2′s 350-400 nits makes for a big gap, but considering the rest of the tablet world is somewhere in the same area for brightness, this including the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the non-Super IPS+ mode of the Prime, these numbers aren’t going to make a BIG difference unless you’re holding them up side by side. The difference comes when you’re standing outside holding the tablet in direct sunlight – and here you’ll find the brightness to make a big difference.

The resolution on this device is 1280 x 800, the panel having a 16:10 ratio and 10.1-inches in size diagonally. Compared to the 9.7-inch iPad 2 display, the pixels per inch on the Transformer are a dominant 145 PPI over the Apple tablet’s 132 PPI. Compare this to the display on the next most popular Android tablet on the market with the Kindle Fire at 169 ppi and you might have a heart attack until you realize that this is because 1024 x 600 pixels are smashed into 7-inches of display instead of the Prime’s 10.1 – much easier to get dense down there at the smaller level.

Final assessment: this is the best display on a 10-inch tablet market today. It’s bright, dense, your games and text are sharp and readable, and you can use this beast outside in the summertime.

Benchmarks

While it’s interesting to mark up a bunch of benchmarks on this and the rest of the tablets in the market, the Transformer Prime is a perfect example of where even though you’ll see lesser tablets out-do it at first glance. What you’re not seeing is the real-world performance here in these tests, and that is always what matters most. Normally I don’t mention this stuff as it should be a given whenever you’re looking at benchmark tests performed on completely different pieces of hardware, but here the truth is quite relevant, as the results are quite deceptive.

As such, feel free to head back to our Hands-on and Unboxing post to see a whole collection of benchmark results on both the Transformer Prime and the original Transformer. Also head back to our ASUS Transformer Prime vs iPad 2 Benchmark Tests post for more of a fight between the two, but remember that the numbers do not perfectly reflect the power within in any case. Have a peek at our hands-on with both devices in the following video to see a bit more of a real-world test of performance, as it were. Games is what you’ll see here, games galore I tell you!

Above you’ll see the iPad 2 on the left and the Transformer Prime on the right, same for the video below – in the video above you’ll see the game Riptide GP, below you’ll see the game Shadowgun. You’ll find that both games have been enhanced in several ways, some big, some small, and though the gameplay is comparable on both machines, the Tegra versions on the Prime are clearly the cooler gaming experiences. Will the iPad versions be updated eventually? Maybe, you never know.

These games are but a taste of the handful of apps developed by gaming groups hand-in-hand with NVIDIA to optimize them for the Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Head down to the software portion of this review to see a few more in high action.

Camera

In this category I’m not even going to begin comparing the camera to any other tablet save one, only ONE tablet in the world at this very moment can hold any kind of candle to the Transformer Prime in any respect, and that is, believe it or not, the $800 HTC Jetstream. What you’ll find is that not only do both of these tablets have the only 8-megapixel cameras in the tablet market, the rest of the market’s cameras are absolutely terrible, especially when compared to these two. Of course the price difference between the Prime and the Jetstream provide you with a clear choice in this case, but their cameras taken aside from that are fairly similar.

Have a peek at a few more examples of what the Transformer Prime’s 8-megapixel camera can do here for photos and for video, the video being 1080p of course. The front-facing camera is the same basic 1.2-megapixel camera we’ve seen on many tablets and smartphones before, it being only of the quality you’d use for video chat – someday we’ll have high quality chat, someday!

Note also that the Transformer Prime boasts a lovely F2.4 aperture, the same rating the iPhone 4S has, so it’s not just the megapixels you’re enjoying here, it’s the guts.

Software

Before we go any further, you should have a look at our first in a series of hands-on videos (and yes, the second is posted above, but it just worked out that way!) Here you’ll find that your humble narrator starts exploring the Transformer Prime by showing off the original Transformer and the app selection it has. The reason for this is that it’s essentially the same set you’ll get with the Transformer Prime, and the reason for THAT is ASUS promotion of the Transformer and the Transformer Prime as a family of devices. Instead of tossing their “older” model under the bus, they’re offering it for the lower of two prices, the Prime then considered the “premium” choice for consumers for its advanced build and processor, not to mention is two lovely color options.

What we’ve gotten here with our review unit is a set of apps direct from NVIDIA and several of their partnered developer groups who made games with the developers at NVIDIA optimized for their newest builds. In this case, for example, there’s a fighting game created to show off the performance of each of the four CPU cores, here simply branded “Chidori.” What Chidori represents is an alliance of gaming groups joined together to provide tools and resources for developers to make their games cross-platform as easily as possible, and their aims with Tegra 3 are made clear in a quote from Katsunori Yamaji, CEO and Executive Producer at Premium Agency Inc for the announcement of the chip last month:

“Tegra 3 is equivalent to a console game machine, and we believe devices with it will play an important part in next-generation games. We’ve been working on optimizing our cross-platform engine Chidori to fully support Tegra 3. To support Tegra 3′s multi-core engine, we’ve optimized our 3D effect tool. And we’ve adapted our high-quality shader library, Aoi, to Tegra 3, allowing truly beautiful imagery.” – Yamaji

Have a peek at what Chidori has to offer in this very pre-production demo:

Next have a look at the game you’ve seen a couple times before if you’ve been following along with the NVIDIA crew and their quad-core processor since before it was called Tegra 3. This game is called Glowball and it’s been in development since the processor inside this tablet was called Project Kal-El, it still here showing off what it was intended for since the start: the pure loveliness of what this device and its system on chip are capable of in the graphics department.

Then behold another early build: Bladeslinger. Much in the same style as the Infinity Blade series and its ability to show off the wonders of the A5 chip in the iPad 2, here Bladeslinger (even in this Alpha or Beta build), looks and acts impressive in every way.

Battery

There are three pre-set modes you can be in on the Transformer Prime, the first being Power Saving Mode, the next being Balanced Mode, and the final being Normal Mode. NVIDIA and ASUS have assured us that Balanced Mode is more than enough of a powerhouse to run all the games we’ve been burning through here, but you know good and well that we want the most powerful mobile processor on the planet working as hard as it can the entire time we’re testing the battery. That said, if the Normal Mode battery life is any indication (and it certainly is), the Power Saving Mode will last you until the end of time with battery life.

What you’re seeing above is a look at the battery life AFTER the firmware update that came in early yesterday from ASUS. The battery life you’re seeing from the reviews run before yesterday are, as I’m sure you say, not the best, but what’s happened after this update came down today was a vast improvement in battery life (amongst other things) including what appears to be the 5th core doing its thing while we have the device with the display off. Have a look back at the post entitled Variable SMP: the brain of quad-core mobile computing and see not only how there’s actually five CPU cores in the Tegra 3 processor in this device, the fifth is activated when the others aren’t needed, this saving you energy in the form of battery power. It’s like a ninja in the night, a ninja fighting for good!

In other words: even on Normal mode, which is what you’re seeing above, we’ve got 10+ hours of battery time. When it comes to running the device with the dock attached, we’re talking about another 50-75% increase in battery time. If you’re using your tablet disconnected from the dock and you’re running HD streaming video to your HDTV, you’ve got much closer to 7 hours of uptime. The biggest killer of your battery is going to be the Super IPS+ mode, which I recommend only using if you’re hanging out on a parade route on the 4th of July in Texas, because even without this feature activated, you’ll be fine out on the town on a normal midwestern sunny day.

Wrap-Up

The ASUS Transformer Prime is without a doubt the finest Android tablet to date, and barring those with an addiction to having what they call the “widest” or “finest” app collection in the land, I’ve got no qualms with calling this the highest quality slate on the market today. Of course the app production ecosystem for the iPad 2 is stronger – people still see it as an easier place to make cash. With Android it’s still not so easy to make a winning application, especially one that’s supported by a market that has a real vetting process. But lo and behold, those of you who are developers of games specifically, you’ve got NVIDIA to work with, and not only do they give developers wanting to work with them the resources they need to make their game optimized for their processors, they promote the heck out of your games by giving them to us to test out.

With NVIDIA promoting this tablet as the first quad-core processor toting tablet on the market, ASUS has a brand tie-in that the rest of the chip producers simply haven’t offered as of yet. NVIDIA is pretty darn good at pumping themselves up as the group to trust for gamers, and with that power the rest of the applications the everyday user uses are more than supported as well – and NVIDIA knows this, and NVIDIA promotes this. Meanwhile you’ll find many (not all), but many of the other devices like this on the market simply promoting their device as having a “super powered dual-core processor” without a brand, or in Apple’s case, they simply re-brand the processor as their own – this is also smart.

So what more could you want? I know what you Android lovers want: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Lucky you, ASUS has already promised to deliver that system sooner than later, with an announcement of when coming sometime later this month from what we understand. The only limit this device has that I’m concerned about is its current system, Android 3.x Honeycomb, the entire line of which (3.0, 3.1, and now 3.2) have been fun to work with, but haven’t been as up to the task of everyday usage in every respect as Ice Cream Sandwich has been in the few short weeks it’s been in the wild.

Therefor I tell you this: if you’re deciding between an iPad 2 and this device, you’re doing it wrong. Buy the one that feels better to you, and go with it. There’s no perfect test to decide between the two, it always comes down to personal preference if you ask me. If you’re deciding on which Android tablet to get, look no further. The rest of the Android slate world has been completely blown away.

Have a peek at the photos below and the video above and know this: this isn’t the end of our review, this is just another bit of it. If you’ve got any questions on this (or any other device we’ve reviewed for that matter) feel free to ask in the comments below. We and I will do our best to answer!

This tablet is the first on the planet to feature a quad-core processor, one made by NVIDIA and detailed in our series of posts on the chip itself – start here, all you lovers of processing power and all its intricacies: NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor revealed and detailed. Now the Transformer Prime is a tablet that in our first hands-on experience has clearly proven itself as a superior slate that rivals the rest of the Android slate series easily. As far as what ASUS has to say on when the device will be released:

“We expect availability to start the week of 12/19 based on the pre-orders and inbound shipment schedules.” – ASUS

Then for those of you that pick the tablet up, you’ll have an update right away:

“We expect to release FOTA image update 8.8.3.27 on 12/2 that updates the EC firmware to improve battery life with the dock in power saving mode along with a few minor performance tweaks.” – ASUS

Now check out our first of a set of hands-on videos with the Transformer Prime and think about what you want to know about the tablet, no matter how important or absolutely trivial. We’ll do our best to find a way to give you what you need to know on the tablet in our hands-on review series and/or our final grand finale review, one way or another!

Hardware

This tablet is made of Gorilla Glass, radial-spun aluminum, and a whole bunch of varied innards that we’ll never come in contact with. The only moving parts on the tablet are the removable covers for each of the ports, the volume bar, and the power/lock button. Unlike the original Transformer whose volume and power buttons have been prone to get a bit loose after extended usage, these are set nicely in place like a high quality product’s buttons should.

The tablet is cold to the touch most of the time because of its entirely aluminum back, and the glass along the front has a nearly up to the edge coverage, making the whole tablet seem rather refined in its industrial design. The back camera boasts an impressive 8-megapixel rating and has a single LED flash, an upgrade on both accounts when you compare this device to most of the rest of the tablet selection out on the market today, including the first generation Transformer.

We won’t go too deep into the products of the camera today, but know this: it’s a vast improvement over most tablet-type camera toters your humble narrator has seen thus far. The camera interface remains mostly the same as your average Honeycomb shooter, as does most of the user interface, but ASUS has done an excellent job modifying the few bits that it has, including first of all the pop-up menu in the lower right-hand corner, it now including the all-important Super IPS button which will blast forth the brightness up to 600nits for outdoor reading.

There’s also to three modes in which you can work: power saving, balanced, and high-performance (aka normal). In our initial battery test, we stayed in Normal mode for the majority of it, and with it we’re seeing something like 10+ hours with a large bit of that being screen off time. This is by no means the scale to judge the battery life by as it wasn’t done under any kind of controlled set of rules, but it is a very basic peek at what we’re likely dealing with here. Expect a vast improvement when we flip the power saving mode on.

Initial Benchmarks

Check out our first round of benchmarks here, and note that each of the following is on the tablet without the keyboard dock attached — also head to the gallery below to see the improvement this tablet has made over the original transformer if you wish.

We’ll also be doing extended tests showing the original Transformer verses the new Prime in a later post, just so you know, as well as any other comparisons to mobile devices you’d like us to do.

Transformer Prime vs. Macbook Air

Another possibility is us comparing this tablet docked in its keyboard dock compared to the MacBook Air. One thing I’ll say right now, something I’m sure some of you out there will have a tiny heart attack reading, is that this device with its keyboard dock may well be a good alternate for those of you thinking the MacBook Air is too costly for your tastes. The Transformer Prime attached to its keyboard is both thin and light, and the whole thing is made of a nice thin but tough aluminum, so what does that sound like to you? Also the keyboard itself is really quite good, comparable to full-blown laptop keyboards from that same fruit-flavored company.

Hands-on

In our first two hands-on videos you’re going to see the device compared to the original Tranformer and some of the unique bits in the software on the Prime, followed by a nice close-up look at the keyboard dock. First up have a peek at the intro and mind the whale at the end, I think you’ll find the bubbles to be more than enough to entice you to go under the sea to track your batteries, if you know what i mean:

Then it’s time to head down deeper into the settings on this tablet / transforming tablet computer, noting especially how NVIDIA wasn’t about to let us take a peek at their Tegra 3 processor embedded inside without testing out a plethora of new games. The games will be shown in future hands-on videos, mind you, so let us know which ones you want to see first and I’ll be sure to fire them up.

Release Details

Then note this: the ASUS Transformer Prime, otherwise known as the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, will be released $499 for the 32GB TF201 model, $599 for the 64GB model, and $149 for the new docking station in the USA. The tablet will be available in Amethyst Gray (like ours) and Champagne Gold, and per Asus: “We expect availability to start the week of 12/19 based on the pre-orders and inbound shipment schedules.” Sound like a good deal to you?

Wrap-up and Questions

At this time I’d like to ask you, the prospective user to ask any and all questions you may have of this tablet so that we can answer them in the upcoming hands-on and review posts. Anything at all, ask away, and don’t forget to mind the videos as well as the photos incase you answer appears there in some form or another. Thanks in advance, and expect the full review in just a few days right here on SlashGear in the main news feed!

We’ve had a pretty decent introduction to this device (and its dock) just this past month at NVIDIA and Asus combined forces for a double-down on launching. This is the first place that NVIDIA will be delivering its quad-core mobile processor that up until recently was code-named Project Kal-El (aka Superman). What we’ve got here now is the Tegra 3 quad-core processor which you can learn all about in the post about how it’s actually got a fifth core, not just four, and the other article all about Variable SMP, the brain of quad-core mobile computing. Both of these posts should sufficiently break down the ins and outs of the processor for you to have an awesome time full of understanding while you rock the Glowball.

Those of you that plan on purchasing this tablet should know that it’s the next generation of Asus’ look at Android, the first coming in the form of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer (without the Prime), a device that plays host to the current dual-core processor NVIDIA has in many Androids: the Tegra 2. You can take a look at our review of the original Eee Pad Transformer tablet from earlier this year. Asus will continue to promote both tablets, but will market the Prime as a premium device while the original will be more of an every-person device with a bit lower cost than this newest addition to the family.

[via Best Buy]

The demos show off the new drag and drop features of the home screen for moving things into folders. The video shows the menu so you can see that it’s running Android 4.0. I can’t read anything that is in the menu though. The transitions effects is one of the things NVIDIA shows off. Those effects are fast and look really good.

Pay special close attention to the 1080p high profile playback. That’s not just coming from Ice Cream Sandwich per-say, but is certainly enhanced by it, as Android 4.0 makes better use of your GPU cores for graphic-intensive tasks leaving your CPU cores to do the tasks they were meant to, more behind the scenes. NVIDIA makes a point to provide education on how their processors work and have ramped up the effort for this newest Tegra 3 system on chip with info sets we’ve got in posts NVIDIA Tegra 3 revealed, the everloving blue-eyed fifth-core, and of course everybody’s favorite, variable SMP.

The demonstration also shows video playback, which is again very smooth and looks high quality. The thing I like best about the video is the demo of gaming on the tablet with ICS. The water effects on the game used in the video are very impressive to say the least. Check out the video for yourself. We have reviewed ICS in the past if you want more detail. The official Asus webpage for the Transformer Prime went live today, and you can take a peek at a comparison collection with the iPhone 4 and the DROID RAZR, then be sure to hit up the official announcement post for the Transformer Prime, and of course some pre-release benchmarks which place this device right at the top of the power stack. Stay tuned to SlashGear for a review of the tablet-based Ice Cream Sandwich as well as a review of the Transformer Prime as soon as we get the chance!

[via Android Community]

The benchmark from OpenGL we’re seeing here shows off the fact that this device is running a screen thats a massive 1920 x 1152, just like the Acer Iconia A700 Tab that also remains in the shadows as of yet. We can also see that this device currently runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb, but we must wager a guess that we’re starting to enter Ice Cream Sandwich territory as the first device with Android 4.0 in full final release mode has already been sent out to reviewers and is in users hands over in the UK. Note also here that the cores this benchmark is seeing has a minimum CPU freq of 102 MHz, this showing how low the device can go, as it were, as well as 1.4GHz (aka 1400 MHz), this tying in precisely with what we’ve heard from NVIDIA as to what their non-overlocked SoC will be working with out of the box.

We can expect this processor to stay the same throughout its lifespan as the Tegra 2 has, as NVIDIA has kept their clocks on the same dial from start to finish thus far on mobile devices – as evidenced by the start of the Tegra 2 in the LG Optimus 2X and the Motorola XOOM and its most recent house in the Samsung Captivate Glide: all dual-core 1GHz, the lot of them. This Lenovo tablet is also said to be coming with 2GB of RAM and of course will be a powerhouse in the making. Can’t wait!

[via Android Community]

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!

There’ll also be 16GB of internal storage – with a microSD card slot to augment that – and WiFi support for 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. It will also include Beats Audio support, with twin speakers and twin microphones, though only a 2-megapixel main camera (still capable of 1080p HD video recording) and a 720p front-facing camera. The whole thing is supposedly less than 9mm thick.

Software will get a polish, as you’d hope, with an HD upgrade for HTC Watch, the company’s movie rental service, and a boosted version of the pen-integration we’ve seen on the previous two tablets. There’ll also be a bundled Dropbox account. HTC Quattro is still the codename, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see it get its official reveal at MWC 2012 next February.

[via Android Community]

The actual size of the A700/A701 is unspecified, though we’re assuming it would come in at around the 10-inch mark otherwise the resolution might end up counter-productive. The A700 is listed as being WiFi-only, while the A701 has a 3G radio integrated, as is Acer’s usual pattern for its tablet line-up.

OS could be Android Honeycomb, going by the browser user agent, rather than Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich; still, Acer has promised ICS upgrades early in the new year. Other hardware isn’t detailed, though dual cameras are likely, along with HDMI connectivity and the usual array of Bluetooth and GPS.

No word on when Acer might make the Iconia Tab A700/A701 official.

[via Notebook Italia]

There’s also a rear-mounted camera with an LED flash – resolution of which is currently unknown – and a USB Host socket for plugging in peripherals like keyboards and mice, as well as external storage. Lenovo has supposedly clad the whole thing in a “Special Fusion-Skin Body” which is similarly lacking in detail; however, we’re guessing it’s some sort of easy-grip coating that cuts down on scratches.

No information on potential price or name has been released, though Lenovo has targeted both consumers and enterprise markets with previous tablets from its stables.

Lenovo certainly wouldn’t be alone in planning on using Tegra 3 for a tablet. ASUS has already unveiled its Eee Pad Transformer Prime, pairing a Tegra 3 slate with a detachable battery-equipped keyboard dock, while more recently both HTC and Acer are believed to have their own versions in the pipeline.

[via Android Community]

Instead, HTC is tipped to be aiming to get its tablet to the market before rivals running Windows 8 are released, that expected to take place sometime in Q3. It’s unclear whether HTC is also preparing a Windows 8 tablet of its own, though rumors earlier this month suggested the company was planning to use the ARM-specific build of the upcoming Microsoft OS on a product of its own.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard talk of HTC and Tegra 3. The company is also tipped to be using the quadcore processor in its HTC Edge smartphone, a supposedly 4.7-inch Android handset with greater pixel density than the iPhone 4S and NFC support. That and the HTC Ville are each believed to make up the company’s MWC 2012 line-up, though we imagine there will be further rumors in the intervening months.

[via DigiTimes]

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!

The videos you’re about to see are magnificent, one of them showing off a game we’ve seen before on the Tegra 2 dual-core processor: Shadowgun. This game is currently only available for devices running the NVIDIA processors Tegra 2 and Tegra 3, and the version you’re seeing here below of course isn’t even officially out yet since the processor isn’t supposed to be in the wild yet. Get wild!

The other application is SuperNote and will allow you to make use of a pen stylus, (which isn’t packaged with the device or even really available from ASUS or anything like that,) this a bit strange outside the idea that ASUS is promoting the tablet as a do-all device. It’s the video above really that you’re going to want to pay the most attention to as it’ll be making full use of all four of the Tegra 3′s active cores, while the app below is more than likely just operating with one.

Now for a couple photos, and you can get the rest back at the source at ZTOP, these pictures showing off what it really means here to be undeniably thin. This tablet, whose details you can get in full in our “ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Official” post, is just 8.3mm thin (and for the record, weighs 586g / 1.29 pounds). Also included below is a less than perfect photo of the Prime next to the also brand new DROID RAZR, a review of which you can find back here. There’s also a comparison shot between the original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and the new one, and one with the Prime plugged into its media dock which makes it a laptop, essentially.

So what’s going on here with this tablet, look like something you want to pick up for ultimate supremacy in Android devices? You must!

[via ZTOP]

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!

This tablet, like its predecessor, is able to be used as a standalone tablet or as a tablet-like device with its mobile keyboard dock. On the front of the device you’ll find a 1.2 megapixel camera for video chat and on the back is an 8 megapixel camera with a lovely F2.4 aperture, illuminated CMOS sensor, low-light noise reduction, and the ability to film videos in 1080p – plus there’s a single LED flash. This tablet is 8.3mm thin and weighs in at 586g (aka 1.29 pounds.)

The back of the device is made of aluminum with a swirl design and two color options: Amethyst Gray or Champagne Gold. The display up front is covered with the ultra-strong and nearly impervious to damage Gorilla Glass from Corning, while the display is a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 pixel Super IPS+ LCD. This display has what ASUS says is a wide 178° viewing angle and has, as ASUS puts it, “ASUS technology to enhance the brightness of the screen for a better outdoor reading experience while still offering a remarkably vivid and brilliant viewing experience of photos, books, videos, movies and web pages indoors.” This technology is known as IPS+ mode and can be seen in the slide below – a whole new brightness indeed.

The Transformer Prime has SonicMaster technology to enhance its ability to blast out the audio. ASUS notes that it’s got crystal clear sound, distinct vocal enhancements, and a wide sound stage – we’ll have to see about that as well, no tablet has really TRULY impressed your humble narrator when it comes to onboard speakers so far, lets hope this breaks the curse.

The device, again, is running the brand new Tegra 3 quad-core processor which will be running at 1.3GHz when all four main cores are active. When only a single core is needed, the device runs that core at 1.4GHz. The way this works can be read in our posts by the names NVIDIA details Variable SMP, the brain of quad core mobile computing and NVIDIA expands on Project Kal-El, adds a fifth core, noting of course that “Project Kal-El” was the code-name for what is now Tegra 3, all of the information in these posts remaining valid through the official naming of the processor.

There are two versions of this tablet as far as internal storage goes, 32GB and 64GB, and both models have a microSD card slot for 32GB of additional storage if you pop your own card in – fill it full of videos for an ultimate win. Play the videos then with the micro HDMI port and excellent tunes through the 3.5mm combo audio jack.

Finally there’s the mobile dock, aka the keyboard bottom of what can very easily become your new carry-along laptop tablet device. This mobile dock adds battery life, has a bonus full-sized USB port and SD card slot for even MORE expanded memory – or just quick transferring of camera photos from your sweet 3rd party camera.

Prices on these bits of hardware are thus:
Transformer Prime 32GB $499
Transformer Prime 64GB $599
mobile dock accessory $149

Also check out all the information you could ever want in the whole world about the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor via the [Tegra 3 portal]. Be there!

Optical lamination, for those who have allowed themselves to fall behind in their mobile display technology reading, involves bonding the LCD panel itself to the cover glass. Seen on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, the end result is a display that appears to be almost floating just under the surface of the phone, with no air-gap and no chance of dust making its way, frustratingly, in-between the two layers.

The overall phone is a mere 8.8mm thick, according to these new sources – an improvement on the roughly 10mm mentioned yesterday – but one of the ways HTC has achieved that is by using a smaller micro-SIM card and deleting the microSD card slot. Instead, you’ll apparently have to make do with 32GB of onboard storage. That could quickly get filled if you get snap-happy with the 8-megapixel camera, with a back-illuminated sensor for improved low-light performance and 28-millimeter f/2.2 lens, unsurprisingly capable of 1080p Full HD video recording.

Still, there’s apparently been enough space for a 1,800 mAh battery – a good idea given the processor – and the other specs we first heard yesterday: 720p front-facing camera, Beats Audio and Bluetooth 4.0. 21Mbps HSDPA and HTC Sense 4.0 on top of an unspecified version of Android wrap things up, with a 2012 launch looking likely.

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!

Everything else, Huang continued, is on the web. As we’ve already seen, in our preview of Windows 8 on tablets, the platform does a solid job of integrating the browser into the normal workflow, as well as allowing multiple pages to be juggled and simultaneously viewed on a touchscreen-only device.

Huang obviously has a vested interest in Windows 8 being tablet-centric from the start. NVIDIA chips are, the exec claimed, currently inside around 70-percent of the non-iPad tablet market, and he said he would definitely be open to powering future Apple iPads too.

As for the future, we’ve already seen a video promoting NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 “Kal-El” leak earlier this week, and Huang says the company is focusing its attentions on bringing down power requirements and reducing complexity. Some of those techniques involve taking advantage of the shortcomings of human users, he claims: for instance, using GPU-powered image-processing techniques that analyze colors and use a smaller palette, based on what the human eye can perceive.

We’ve known for some time that the Transformer 2 is coming, and Asus seems delighted to tease consumers with the successor to one of the most well-received Android Honeycomb tablets. Earlier today we saw a promotional video showing of “the next transformation“. Shih confirmed that the Transformer 2 will be using a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, and that the device is an impressively thin 8.3mm. Asus will officially announce the tablet on November 9th. Unfortunately there’s no confirmation on whether or not it’s running Ice Cream Sandwich, but Shih teased that we might see Asus tablets using the latest version of Android before the end of the year.

Shih also spoke on Asus’ PadPhone concept device, a smartphone with a dockable tablet that we’ve heard far too little on since it was shown off in March. The smartphone/tablet hybrid device is currently being tested by carriers (he didn’t say which) and should be ready for a wide release early next year. And yes, the PadPhone will run Ice Cream Sandwich, which is designed to handle phone and tablet duties with equal vigor.

Check out SlashGear’s hands-on coverage of Ice Cream Sandwich for a sneak peek at the upcoming OS:

Android Ice Cream Sandwich Hands-on

[via Android Community]

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!

Well wait, you might be saying, isn’t that where they should be? Yes it is! Up until now, as you’ll see in this post from several months ago, the tablet selection for Android was both irritably badly set up AND was 2 whole aisles away (at least) from the rest of the mobile section of Target. What’s happening now, it seems, is that both the Motorola XOOM and the Acer Iconia Tab A500, the two tablets that represent the rest, have been bumped up a few steps to sit where they belong.

What’s still happening here with these two Android NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor-toting tablet computers is that they’ve got protective plastic shields over their faces so that they can’t be tampered with. What this is doing, of course, is disallowing customers from actually experiencing the tablets, thusly turning them completely off from desiring to move forward with a purchase. That said, the Apple iPad 2 is also under a plastic case, but set up with a much nicer presentation undoubtedly designed by Apple themselves.

Have a look at the How Target’s Mobile Ecosystem works and how it could improve post I put up a few weeks ago – it’s still very much in effect, and since I’ve written said article, only a couple changes have been made – one being the tablet re-arrangement, the other being the addition of working (yet under plastic, again), iPhone 4 units amongst the rest of the devices. Which one looks most desirable to you?

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!

The OS for the tablet is Android 3.2 and the 7-inch screen has a resolution of 1280 x 800. RAM is 1GB and storage is 16GB. The tablet has a rear camera with 5MP resolution and a front camera that has 2MP resolution. The battery is rated at 4,000 mAh. The tablet is 11.5mm thick and coupled with the 7-inch screen it will be easy to lug around with you on the go.

The tablet will support wireless connectivity with GSM900/1800 and China Mobile TD1900/2010 support. There is no word on the launch of the tablet, but it will hit Hong Kong and Taiwan first. The tablet also supports 1080p video output. What do you think about this tablet?

[via Engadget China]

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!