Jerry Shen, the CEO of ASUS, has recently gone on the record about the new tablet arena that Amazon’s Kindle Fire has created. First off, he said that he has no immediate plans to slash the price of the original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer to keep up with the Fire. We have already seen some companies do this in the wake of Amazon’s rumored 100,000 pre-orders of their new tablet, but ASUS says they are still gaining successful results from their tablets.

Shen also let slip that the upcoming Transformer 2 would be priced at $499, more than the $399 that the original Transformer cost you. This is not surprising news considering that it is rumored that the sequel to the Transformer will be the first tablet shipped with NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor. We have seen and heard some awesome things from that processor and we should be hearing more on the Transformer 2 in the coming months since it was supposed to be out this fall.

Via: Digitimes

Chinese manufacturer ZTE showed off their latest 7-inch tablet, the ZTE T98 at the CES (China International Exhibition Center) expo in Beijing. The T98 features Android 3.2 Honeycomb and the new NVIDIA Tegra 3 (Quad-core) chipset clocked at 1.5GHz, being the first tablet to do so. The tablet also sports 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a front (2MP) and rear camera (5MP) that can shoot 1080p HD video and with an extremely small 4000mAh battery.

Oddly enough, the T98 comes with 3G GSM radios and does not include 4G of any sort, nor does it contain an NFC chip. The benchmarks are also extremely lackluster when you consider the specs, lets just assume that it is because the software has not yet been optimized for quad-core devices. At this time there is no information regarding availability or pricing. 

After disappearing for 4 months or so, SHADOWGUN has returned in an official trailer with one purpose, to give you a glimpse at what we can expect when this puppy is paired with a Kal-El quad-core processor. We should point out that the version in this trailer is for the iPad and iPhone, so imagine a much more in-depth and graphic intense one on Android.  Yes, that’s me assuming a lot, but knowing what NVIDIA has planned for their next batch of processors let’s me do that.

Via:  DroidGamers

Two new NVIDIA white papers have been released this morning that dive deep into the world of project Kal-El, the world’s first quad-core processor.  The first paper focuses on the benefits of quad-core in a variety of cases including console-class gaming and the new 12-core GPU that produces 3x the graphics performance of this year’s Tegra 2 processor.  Other benefits would be faster pageload times in browsers, quick multi-tasking, better performance while using processor-heavy apps, and most importantly, overall lower power consumption without a drop in performance.

The second paper details an-almost secret “5th core” called the companion core, that allows your device to use much less power while in standby or using background tasks such as music, Facebook updates, and email syncing.  With this companion core, the main quad-core is essentially able to shut down completely, allowing your device to last much longer.

Both papers are great reads for anyone interested in learning all there is to know about this upcoming Kal-El chipset.

White papers:  Benefits of Quad-core | Multi-core CPUs: Low Power and High Performance 

Dual-core is so yesterday, it’s all about the quad-core processors in this day and age. While most of the news surrounding the new processors has been about NVIDIA’s Kal-El, Qualcomm has announced plans for it’s own quad-core processing beasts.

The next generation Snapdragon processors would be clocked as high as 2.5GHz in single, dual and quad cores. The S4 class chipset will also offer Adreno Graphics, 3D, 1080p HD, as well as supporting 3G and LTE connectivity as standard. These beastly processors will be available to manufactories by the end of the year, with devices hitting the market by the start of 2012.

I can’t wait for CES and MWC, now let’s hope battery innovators can come up with something “juicy”.

Via: Pocket-Lint

Color me surprised, because the largest retailer of video games in the nation is involved with talks that they will be launching their own brand of Android tablet sometime during the next year. Gamestop president Tony Bartel explained today that they are currently testing the sale and distribution of a currently unspecified Android tablet that will come paired with a controller peripheral of some sort.

The goal of the device is apparently to stream full retail releases while still supporting mobile apps and other things. Bartel even said that there would be titles made specifically for the tablet.

All of this is very very interesting, but not far off after seeing that Kal-El processors are going to be here very soon. The problem is, who wants to carry around a tablet AND a controller to play Modern Warfare 3? It seems unwieldy to try and play a large game like that on a small screen. I can’t even read a book at the right angle on a tablet, how am I gonna pwn some n00bz? What do you guys think of this announcement?

Via: Joystiq

A roadmap of NVIDIA’s current mobile processor plans for now through 2013 may have leaked online over the weekend, potentially giving us a look at an already-updated Kal-El (quad-core) chip and their goal of dividing the company into to separate businesses.  We had heard last week from CEO Jen-Hsun Huang that Kal-El processors had been delayed slightly, but would be available in tablets some time this year.  What we had not heard, was that there may be a Kal-El+ processor that will replace it just a few months after those initial device releases.  No details on what the + means in this new quad-core chip were made available in this leak.

The other interesting bit of info we get from this roadmap is the mid-2012 splitting of their mobile processor unit.  There had been talk of NVIDIA entering the non-superphone market to help grow this business and I would say this certainly confirms that.  Project “Wayne” appears to be the superphone and tablet division, while “Grey” could be their “mass consumption” line of processors.  So not only will we see NVIDIA producing a line of game-changing processors that match up with best of them, but we will also see a set of standard processors make their way into the average super phone.

And yes, Windows Phone is listed on there.  Would make sense for NVIDIA to jump into bed with additional operating systems.

Via:  Heisse, Android and Me

We love NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang here at Droid Life.  The dude has a ton of energy, an addicting personality, and most importantly, loves for his company to push the envelope.  After exploding onto the Android scene at CES this past January with their Tegra 2 dual-core chips, Huang wasted no time showing off what they had planned next – quad-core processors.  Codenamed Kal-El, these were expected (still are) to be the world’s first mobile quad-core processors with an estimated launch in tablets of this past August and in phones by the end of the year.  Unfortunately due to setbacks, neither of those time frames will/has been met.  Don’t worry though, we are still expecting to see a quad-core of some sort this year, it just won’t be in a phone.

During a sit down with media this week, Huang mentioned that their time line has now changed.  They still expect to launch quad-core tablets this year, but phones will likely be pushed into next year.  He also announced plans to move into the mass-processor consumption market, meaning they will do more than just produce processors for superphones and tablets.

On an interesting side note, Huang made a comment about his competitors – well there is only one according to him.  During his chat with press, he pointed out that Qualcomm and NVIDIA are really the only two serious players in the game right now:

“We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm,” contends Huang, who is known for being outspoken. “We’re really the only two active players [in the high-end mobile processor market].”

The funny thing here is that Google has already chosen a Texas Instruments processor to develop their next version of Android on.  So while we just professed our love for Huang, we find it odd that he would take such a blatant cheap shot at TI.  Is he miffed at the fact that they weren’t chosen for Ice Cream Sandwich or does he really just think that TI processors are crap?  Who knows exactly why he left them out, but it sure gave us a good laugh.

Back to the point of the article…anyone saddened by the delay news?  Are we surprised by delays anymore?

Oh, and speaking of NVIDIA.  We have goodies to give away.  Stay tuned for those details.

Via:  Forbes