LG Optimus 4X HD official: 4.7-inch quad-core Tegra 3 smartphone with Android 4.0

News

  • February 23, 2012 at 5:38 am

0

LG Optimus 4X HD Tegra 3 Android smartphone

It’s no secret that we will be seeing a lot of Tegra 3 devices at MWC 2012, but LG has just beat everyone else to officially announce the first quad-core smartphone, named Optimus 4X HD (a.k.a. LG X3). Looking past LG’s lengthy naming convention, the new smartphone will certainly become the flagship for its 2012 lineup. It’s a massive 4.7-inch device with a 720p HD IPS LCD display running on the 1.5GHz quad-core (or 4-PLUS-1 as NVIDIA calls it) Tegra 3 SoC. Inside that 8.9mm thin body, you’ll find 1GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in storage and a not too shabby 2,150mAh battery.

The Optimus 4X HD will be running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and we’ve already seen that Tegra 3 SoC grabbing a 4,412 Quadrant score, handily beating other ICS devices like the Galaxy Nexus (full review here).
continue reading

Rumored LG X3 flexes its quad-core Tegra 3 muscles in Android 4.0 benchmarks

News

  • February 15, 2012 at 12:36 pm

0

LG X3 smartphone render

NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 quad-core SoC is said to appear on more than one device at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by the end of the month. One of these is the LG X3, which we first saw last month.

We’re pretty sure this will be LG’s flagship Android handset for 2012, with a 4.7-inch screen and 720p resolution. It will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream sandwich on a, as mentioned, 1.5GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip, which features some pretty smart power saving features so hopefully it won’t be too taxing for its 2,000mAh battery.
continue reading

ASUS Transformer Prime to receive update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on 12 January

News

  • January 3, 2012 at 2:00 pm

0

ASUS Transformer Prime running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

ASUS has taken to its official Facebook page to announce that its Nvidia Tegra 3 tablet will soon be updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). The update will start rolling out on the 12th of January to the 10.1-inch quad-core ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, making it the first Android tablet to officially receive Android ICS. We are sure this will put a smile on all the lucky Transformer Prime owners out there.

Nevertheless, there has been a backlash from the developer community, as Transformer Prime owners discovered that the tablet’s bootloader is locked. ASUS explains that having a locked bootloader is a Google DRM (Digital Rights Management) requirement in order to allow users to rent videos. ASUS intends to provide an unlock utility. Use of the tool will void your warranty and make Google Video unavailable.
continue reading

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II coming in 2012, will be Tegra 3 optimized on Android

News

  • December 30, 2011 at 11:21 am

0

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II

The world’s most popular hedgehog will be joined by his sidekick for the second installment in the Sonic 4 series. Sega has just announced that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II will be making its 2D return in 2012. The new side-scrolling adventure will see Sonic joined by Tails in what we’ve been hearing will be a much richer production.

Episode I had received a lukewarm response so Sega is now pulling out all the stops. Episode II has a completely reworked physics and graphics engines. The game will be released on a number of console and mobile platforms: Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS App Store, Android Market and Windows Phone 7.

What’s more interesting is that for Android, Sega has been working closely with Nvidia, and a Tegra 3 enhanced version will be hitting the Android Market and featured on the Tegra Zone app. Let’s see how the new video game will be taking full advantage of the quad-core Tegra 3 chip. Announcement trailer video after the brake.
continue reading

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet gets a hands-on foreplay video review

News

  • November 23, 2011 at 6:04 pm

0

ASUS Transformer Prime with keyboard dock

By now you should be well briefed on the quad-core Tegra 3 powered 10.1-inch Android tablet by ASUS, also known as the Transformer Prime. We first looked at the keyboard dock-able tablet early this month and we know that it will hit retail channels in the coming weeks. You can actually pre-order it from Amazon.de for EUR 599.

One lucky fellow managed to get his hands on a sample Transformer Prime and has shot a nice overview video of the tablet. The unofficial review starts the tablet on the keyboard dock and ends with an obligatory thickness comparison to the original ASUS Transformer and of course, the iPad 2. The Transformer Prime ships with Android Honeycomb on-board, but judging by the video already released by Nvidia, it won’t take long for it to be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Video is after the break.
continue reading

Android Ice Cream Sandwich demoed on ASUS Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet (video)

News

  • November 22, 2011 at 4:26 pm

0

ASUS Transformer Prime running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

If you’ve been wondering how Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) looks like on a tablet, then wonder no more. Once Google made the source code of ICS available, Nvidia and ASUS rushed to the challenge and got the new operating system working on the ASUS Transformer Prime tablet. As a reminder the Transformer Prime is the first device to run on Nvidia’s brand new quad-core Tegra 3 chip. We’ve covered the Tegra 3 here, and it’s an impressive piece of silicon, which promises not only awesome processing and graphics power, but also longer battery life through aggressive throttling and a frugal 500MHz companion fifth-core.

We would easily guess that pairing such a chip with the latest and greatest version of Android would result in some smooth performance and now we’ve got the evidence to prove it. Nvidia has published a video of Android Ice Cream Sandwich running super smoothly on the Transformer Prime. If you would enjoy watching cool transitions, smooth 1080p playback and a demo of a quad-core optimized game called Riptide GP, head on after the break.
continue reading

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet gaming hands-on and pictures (video)

News

  • November 12, 2011 at 9:22 am

0

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime hands-on

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime 10.1-inch Android tablet is coming in December and it’s coming in hot. It will be the first mobile device to run on the quad-core (or should we say penta-core) Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. The Tegra 3 promises both amazing performance, with three times higher graphics performance than the Tegra 2, and as we’ve seen in our initial coverage, it will also offer better battery life, since it features a fifth low-power core which takes over automatically to reduce energy consumption.

The Eee Pad Transformer Prime is set to debut for $499 in December, while a keyboard dock accessory will also be offered, essentially turning it into a ‘laptop’, hence the the transformer part. It will initially come with Android 3.2 Honeycomb but a promised Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update will soon be in the works.

A Brazilian blog, Ztop, managed to get its hands on the tablet and has posted some first pictures of the Transformer Prime, showing off its thinness against an iPhone 4 and a Droid RARZ and getting friendly with the keyboard dock. There is also a hands-on video showing the tablet’s gaming abilities running the game Shadowgun; you’ll find it all after the break.
continue reading

Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core mobile chip revealed: more power, better battery life (video)

News

  • November 9, 2011 at 5:23 pm

0

Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core mobile chip

The Nvidia Tegra 2 monopolized Android Honeycomb tablets this year and we already knew that Nvidia had a successor in the works with the codename ‘Kal-El’. Today Nvidia has come clean with a host of new details on the project and the official Tegra 3 name, and yes mark it down as the first mobile quad-core CPU, yeah ever.

Nvidia is claiming that the new Tegra 3 chip will offer up to five times the performance of the Tegra 2 with its 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex A9 processor and three times the graphics performance with a new 12-core graphics unit. What’s more interesting is that Nvidia has included a fifth, low-power 0 to 500MHz “companion core”. When you don’t need the power afforded by the quad-core unit, the companion core takes over, taking care of light-weight tasks, like listening to music, or during standby. The chip is also intelligent enough to scale the main 4 cores between single, dual and quad-core modes on demand as well.
continue reading

NVIDIA Tegra Zone app is live on the Android Market, a destination for the visually demanding

News

  • March 1, 2011 at 10:58 am

0

NVIDIA Tegra Zone Android app

NVIDIA has just announced that its promised application, Tegra Zone, is now live on the Android Market. NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chips, inheriting from the company’s DNA, can handle high performance 3D graphics effects and while the Android Market is full of games that don’t yet take advantage of such power, the company’s app lets you extract the few games that are optimized for the platform.
continue reading