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Nvidia Unveils Its Own 7" Tegra Note Tablet
crookedvulture writes "Nvidia has already produced a gaming handheld based on its quad-core Tegra 4 SoC. Today, the company announced plans to build a 7" Tegra Note tablet that uses the same chip. Rather than selling the tablet itself, Nvidia will make the device available through parters like EVGA and PNY. Asking price: $199. That seems a little steep given the Tegra Note's 1280x800 display resolution, which delivers a much lower PPI than the 1080p panel in the latest Nexus 7. But the Tegra Note does have some perks, including front-facing speakers, Micro HDMI output, microSD expansion, and an optional stylus. The tablet also boasts a fancy camera that taps into the Tegra chip's photography engine. Nvidia promises to keep the device updated with the latest versions of Android, too. You can expect to see the Tegra Note for sale worldwide in the next few months."
... does it run Linux?
Nexus has no stylus either... Wacom pen perhaps? Too bad its not 8", if so id buy it in a heartbeat when it came out.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
>> fancy camera that taps into the Tegra chip's photography engine
Careful - you don't want to overwhelm us with too many technical details.
displays use different tech and numbers don't tell the whole story. if you want the best display for your eyes go to the store and look at them
hyping the resolution numbers is about as big a scam as megapixels on digital cameras
On a 7" display, I don't see the benefit. Seriously, and I mean this sincerely. I am a high-resolution junkie in so many ways. If I can see the pixels, I am annoyed. And I threw a fit when Dell went from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 for their best laptops. And so when the new Google Nexus 7 came out, I was there to get one. But now that I have one, I am not displeased with it, but I am also not "impressed" with it either. I mean I can tell the difference to be sure, but the difference just isn't huge. And that may actually be the fault of the applications themselves... the games I play. Video plays back fine though .. and it is very clear. But the 1280x800 was fine... and still is. And while I am not sure it's worth the full $199, it's not bad and does enable useful features. I guess I'll look it over when I can.
At first glance this might make me reconsider a new iPad!
something I really like about Nvidia the company.
Comfortably warm, or blistering performance to the point of hardware failure?
I agree. I turn my 7" tablet sideways to get the same width of my 10", and it just requires a little more scrolling. The difference in weight is a huge difference when holding the device for extended periods.
That could be one difference ... I've got mine locked to a landscape orientation because I find in portrait mode the fonts are too small. But I found the same thing on my 10" tablet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yet another half-assed, get to market quick, abandoned by its own makers before the next year is out Android tablet that will be so unsatisfying to use, it should be labled as landfillware.
> Nvidia promises to keep the device updated with the latest versions of Android, too.
Years ago I picked up an eMagin head mounted display for about a grand, which was pretty spectacular until Nvidia dropped support for the product with their next driver release, making it totally useless for any game that came out after the HMD was released. Nvidia had made a deal with the people who make the Trimon 3D monitors, and as part of that, they had dropped support for prior 3D products. Do not trust Nvidia to provide usable updates, unless you want to waste money like I did.
Nvidia is shovelling out this tablet via its GPU partners. However, Nvidia was too stupid or malicious to even give a nod to gaming on this tablet. No joypad controls, either built in or as an optional clip-on. No streaming of PC games to the tablet, unlike the PS4, Xbone, Wii U, or Nvidia's own 'shield' portable gaming device.
Where's the hires display? Where's the 2GB of RAM? Nvidia's Tegra 4 merely draws equal in performance with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon parts (as found in Google's latest Nexus 7 and similar tablets).
It gets WORSE. Nvidia will fully disown the Tegra 4 (and T3, T2) when they release the Tegra 5 next year! Why? Because the Tegra 5 has PC class graphics, not the primitive ancient graphics core of the older Tegra's. I'm sorry, but AMD/ATI and Nvidia take great delight in trashing their older designs, once the newer ones are available, and describing the users of the older devices as "irrelevant losers". It's just how this business drives itself forward.
Nvidia needs to compete with Imagination (of the PowerVR GPU in Apple chips), Intel, AMD, and ARM (Mali), and each of these companies have state-of-the-art OpenGL ES3.0 GPU cores. The sooner Nvidia can forget about the trash it was forced to use in Tegra 4 and earlier, the better.
So, this tablet has to be judged purely as a lowish mid-end 7" tablet of the now, and in that respect it is somewhat overpriced. It will suffer constant price drops, but always too little and too late to make it of much interest. By the time it is being 'given' away early next year, the obvious future lack of support from Nvidia will still turn most people off.
Had Nvidia given the damned thing the option to convert into a tablet form of the SHIELD, it would have justified its existence regardless of its shortcomings. But Nvidia has never been more incompetent as a company than it is at present.
Does it count as a 'design win' or a 'design award for participation' when you award it to yourself?
Truth hurts sometimes. But I have to agree with her.
if you plug it into a tv its a pretty good drawing pad
Truth hurts sometimes.
Then stop bending over.
Ok what games are available for Android that would tax this? Stuff like Pocket Legends and Idiot Running Thru Temples or whatever doesn't cut it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"One of the many innovations it introduced was NVIDIA DirectStylus technology, which significantly improves passive stylus performance."
Does this thing have USB host?, so you can plug in USB peripherals. That would be nice to have on such a powerful computer.