It’s kind of exciting watching a company like NVIDIA take a little more control over their hardware destiny. First with the Shield gaming handheld which I really liked from this year’s E3, and now with Tegra Note.
Tegra Note is an evolution of their Kai reference design. Last year NVIDIA led the industry with a design to simplify and lower costs for producing smaller tablets. They’re proud to claim the original Nexus 7 as having been inspired by this groundwork. I’m sure NVIDIA learned a lot about tablets by putting Kai out there and seeing how other manufacturers adopted and changed it.
Now Kai is evolving into the Tegra Note, a 7″ tablet featuring NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 chipset. The list of features is formidable:
| Processor | Tegra 4 mobile processor with quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU and 72-core GeForce GPU |
| Display | 7-inch HD IPS LCD display (1280 x 800) |
| Camera | Rear 5MP and front VGA webcam |
| Storage | 16GB storage with microSD expandable up to an additional 32GB |
| Audio | Front-facing “HD Audio” stereo speakers with a unique bass-reflex port |
| Stylus | Chisel and Brush tips for natural writing and broad strokes |
| Peripherals | Micro HDMI connector to drive big screen TV videos and gaming |
| OS | 100% Android with latest version of the OS |
| Software Updates | Over-the-air software updates directly from NVIDIA |
| Battery Life | 10 hours HD video playback |
If it’s built anything like Shield it should be some quality hardware, and it’ll launch with a magnetic flip cover which can prop it up like a stand. Plus NVIDIA is promising timely OS updates, which is becoming an important selling point for Android customers.
Alongside this specific tablet, NVIDIA’s partners are also working on tablets which follow this reference model, so expect to see more competition around the $200 price point soon from HP, Asus, Toshiba, Xiaomi, and Kobo with Tegra 4 parts.
I find the name interesting however. The badge “Note” is a proper branding for Samsung phones and tablets. NVIDIA is also rocking a proper stylus, but I’m left wondering if they couldn’t find any other name to describe what this tablet could do. I dunno, maybe something like Tegra Style? Or Tegra Design? Yeah, both of those names suck… Nevermind…
(via NVIDIA blog)
