NVIDIA DirectTouch promises more responsive multi-touch experience on Tegra 3 powered Android devices (video)

News

  • February 26, 2012 at 4:51 am

0

NVIDIA DirectTouch architecture comparison

One of the criticisms against Android over Apple’s iOS, is that it doesn’t offer the same level of multitouch responsiveness and UI smoothness. This perceived ‘lagginess’ has been the subject of much debate, but we won’t go into that right now.

Well NVIDIA has been pimping its newest 4-PLUS-1 quad-core (plus fifth power-saving core) Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip (SoC) and created a new mobile touch technology, named DirectTouch, promising to improve multitouch experience. The DirectTouch architecture offloads part of the touch panel processing to the Tegra 3 CPU cores, reducing lag and increasing touch samples per second. This should improve user interface responsiveness and accuracy and of course gaming experience, without any expense on battery life.
continue reading

Asus and NVIDIA announce 7-inch Tegra 3 quad-core tablet with Ice Cream Sandwich for $249

News

  • January 10, 2012 at 3:35 am

0

Asus 7-inch NVIDIA Tegra 3 tablet ME370T

There are a lot of new tablets at CES this year. The biggest piece of news however has just come in today. NVIDIA has announced that a 7-inch version of the Asus Transformer Prime, which will also run on the Tegra 3 quad-core SoC and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, is coming soon. The Asus ME370T tablet will sell for $249 at launch.

This completely blows the under-powered and barebones $199 Kinde Fire and $249 Nook Tablet out the water. Besides the super fast Tegra 3 chip, the 7-inch Asus tablet will have a 1280 x 800 screen resolution and an 8-megapixel camera.
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

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

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

Razer Blade gaming laptop, is green the new black?

News

  • August 27, 2011 at 9:11 am

1

Razer Blade gaming laptop backlit keyboard and LCD touchpad

Or is it the color of envy? The envy your buddies will be feeling when you bring this laptop to your next LAN party. But we’d better take it from the top, Razer is best known for its performance computer peripherals such as gaming mice and keyboards. In fact Razer peripherals are good for any type of use and I happily own a Razer Mamba desktop mouse and an Orochi portable bluetooth mouse. Razer is also known for excessive use of neon-colored LEDs, but I guess that’s the conception of what gamers want.
continue reading