Nvidia has landed its first deal to provide both mobile connectivity and app processing for a single handset, revealing that ZTE is sourcing both its Tegra 2 and Icera radio chips for its new Mimosa X Android phone. Nvidia isn’t Qualcomm yet, but it’s getting closer. Read more »
Benchmark results of a quad-core Android smartphone appeared on the web, and the handset tests twice as fast as recent smartphones, such as the Galaxy Nexus. But there’s an important aspect to remember here: software is still catching up to hardware, so set your expectations accordingly. Read more »
The Asus Transformer Prime has several “firsts” for 2012. It’s the first tablet to use Google’s Android 4.0 software. And it’s the first tablet to run on Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core chip. So does first equal best? In this case, yes for those who like Android. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Asus kicked things up a notch at CES with the Transformer Prime and Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor, making for the best tablet gaming I’ve seen yet. The Transformer Prime with keyboard dock should run for at least 18 hours; here’s a look at this potent portable. Read more »
Acer introduced its A200 tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier in January, and unlike many products shown at the event, this one is already available for sale in the U.S. Is it worth the money, considering it uses technology that was available a year ago? Read more »
Continuing a yearlong trend, the fourth quarter in big IT was all about big data, and Hadoop in particular. Still, many are beginning to recognize the software framework’s shortcomings, which is why this quarter also saw more attention for startups claiming easy analytics and real-time processing. Elsewhere in infrastructure, SaaS startups made out well and valuations for these companies are getting higher, and naturally there was news from the AWS camp. This quarterly wrap-up examines these events and more, including the quarter’s dark spot, the hike in prices in the hard-drive manufacturing space due to the floods in Thailand. Companies mentioned in this report include Calxeda, Heroku, Rackspace, Salesforce.com and Tier3. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There’s a trend building, and it’s not good for the PC industry. It’s not tablet and smartphone growth — although that’s part of the trend — but virtualization on mobile devices. This allows remote PC access from a tablet, for example, and could hurt already slowing PC sales. Read more »
I was playing the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim video game today at CES; a game I play often at home on my Xbox 360 and large-screened HDTV. But I wasn’t playing on my Xbox. I was playing on an Nvidia Tegra 3 powered Android 4.0 tablet. Read more »
The compute and server world is changing rapidly, with webscale companies such as Facebook and Amazon dominating the web and creating new lines of business. With that comes change to the value chain of server and silicon companies, and we now stand at an inflection point ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We’ve seen Android 4.0, also known as the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google’s mobile platform, on a phone, but not on tablets. That changes with this video from Nvidia, showing off 1080p video and 3D gaming thanks to the Tegra 3 inside ASUS’s Transformer Prime. Read more »
You may not care who makes the processing chip in your smartphone or tablet yet, but if chip makers have their way, you will in the future. Qualcomm is expanding its lineup of games exclusive to devices running on its Snapdragon processor, similar to Nvidia’s TegraZone. Read more »
Iongrid’s new Nexus software promises to bring your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets to your iPad with what it calls “pixel perfect” fidelity and in a way that won’t give IT or the compliance department a collective heart attack. Read more »
In the past decade supercomputers were dressed-up versions of Intel’s x86 machines, but increasingly supercomputers are borrowing innovations (and silicon in the form of ARM-based chips or DSPs) from the mobile and big data realms to add speed without guzzling too much power. Read more »
Join Matt and Kevin for the weekly mobile tech podcast. On tap: An interview with Stephen Elop and hands-on impressions of Nokia’s Lumia 800 start the show, the new Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, upcoming AT&T smartphones and new Android tabets; now with quad-core processors! Read more »
New Android devices launched this week, but I’m intrigued in a older one. Can Samsung’s Galaxy Note be both a take-everywhere phone and tablet? Asus debuted its Transformer Prime with Nvidia’s Tegra 3, while the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet show off as low-cost tablets. Read more »
Notebook makers are reportedly bidding on chip supplies from both Intel and those provided by vendors using the ARM architecture, presumably to compete better on pricing with Apple. The real story is that the next round of chip wars between Intel and ARM licensees is here. Read more »
Nvidia is the first chip-maker to deliver a quad-core mobile chip, the Tegra 3, for use in Android devices. I’ve argued in the past that throwing hardware at Android tablets won’t sell more of them, but the timing of this new chip just might be right. Read more »
Asus is showing off the first Nvidia-powered quad-core tablet, which may intially run Google Android Honeycomb. I welcome advances in computer chips, but the time of “most powerful hardware” being best are long over. Today, top devices also require great apps and a solid user experience. Read more »
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 chips are expected next year and will be the first to support all of the major 2G, 3G and 4G networks with a single integrated modem. It’s smaller, more powerful and should improve battery life on 4G smartphones, tablets and other devices. Read more »
Intel is very serious about low power chips, although it won’t have them until 2013. The company showed off the long-rumored Haswell chips at its developer forum on Tuesday, which it says can can run all day and offer a 20x reduction in power. Read more »
Microsoft and Intel unveiled initiatives Tuesday that show how the Wintel partners are trying to separately navigate a new post-PC world. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, which will work on ARM-based tablets and computers while Intel announced a partnership with Google to optimize its chips for Android. Read more »
Netflix certified more Android devices for its software, adding support for a number of handsets and tablets powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor. That brings the total number of Netflix-capable smartphones and tablets up to 22. Good, because consumers don’t care whose chip powers their device. Read more »
Lenovo today introduced a trio of new tablet computers, two running Google’s Android 3.1 operating system and the third powered by Microsoft Windows 7. Netflix certification and pen support are nice features, but those alone aren’t enough. For the same cost, consumers are opting for iPads. Read more »
Sprint today introduced the Motorola Photon 4G, the company’s first WiMAX handset with international support, and will launch the smartphone on July 31. Featuring a 960×540 high-resolution display and dual-core Tegra 2 processor, the Android smartphone works across borders, but sadly leaves the 4G behind. Read more »
Mobile phone manufacturer HTC has purchased VIA Semiconductor’s graphics business. The deal is indicative of the need for compelling graphics on mobiles as well as an admission that mobile device makers may get an edge if they can bring some silicon capabilities in house. Read more »
New MacBook Airs could be right around the corner, according to stock shortages at retail partners like Best Buy and Amazon. OS X Lion is also arriving in July, which begins in only a few short days, and the Air could arrive at the same time. Read more »
When it comes to software for reading e-books or magazines, a better visual experience is key. Zinio’s magazine app today improves that experience, but the software itself isn’t the solution. Optimization with capable hardware makes the page turns and text zooming far more fluid than before. Read more »
For decades, innovation in the chip industry has largely been governed by the needs of personal computers. But thanks to the proliferation of connected mobile devices, the growth of the consumer web and services available online and on-demand, the PC’s influence on chip design is fading. Read more »
More capable smartphones and tablets, combined with a growing number of online video services are heavily increasing mobile media consumption: Limelight’s data shows a 600-percent jump from the past year and that’s a bad sign for those hoping unlimited data plans will stick around. Read more »
T-Mobile will start selling the HTC Sensation 4G on June 15, but we scored an early review unit. The phone has impressed so far, and so did Nvidia when it unveiled a quad-core chip this week, while ViewSonic proves that Honeycomb runs on small slates. Read more »
Mobile video is here to stay whether it’s chatting with friends via Skype or streaming movies from Netflix. Even Adobe’s Flash player has a place in the Apple-definedpost-PC era judging by several announcements showing application providers and chipmakers marrying various video codecs to their silicon. Read more »
The first dual-core Android tablets only arrived in February, but Nvidia is already showing off an improved quad-core chip it expects in tablets by August. A video demo of the chip, codenamed “Kal-El,” shows impressive performance: enough that some consumers may wait to buy a tablet. Read more »
Compute giant Hewlett-Packard has teamed up with Nvidia to make a server containing up to eight graphics processors designed for the high performance computing market. The two have built the world’s “Greenest Production Supercomputer” together, and the machine using Nvidia’s latest GPUs offers more performance. Read more »
If you didn’t think computing’s future was both visual and mobile, then Nvidia’s decision to buy wireless radio startup Icera clinches it. The $367 million cash deal is setting Nvidia up for a competitive battle with Qualcomm in the mobile application processor market. Read more »
After a few days of using the T-Mobile G2x, I’m generally impressed. It’s the first dual-core handset on T-Mobile and simply flies for most activities. Here’s a video overview of the hardware, along with demos of the browser, 1080p video playback and high-quality gaming. Read more »
LG, the South Korean makers of phones televisions, household appliances and a variety of other consumer devices has licensed the ARM-based chip cores that can be found in devices from handsets to set-top-boxes. Once again, a vendor has forgotten to invite Intel to the party. Read more »
Two markets stand out above all else when looking at the first quarter of 2011: infrastructure as a service (IaaS) — the epitome of cloud computing — and big data. Amazon Web Services continues to lead the IaaS space in terms of customers and innovation, while Rackspace, buoyed by momentum around OpenStack, will be its primary competitor for mainstream customers. In the big data space, there are so many players and terms floating about it’s difficult for outsiders to get a handle on who’s who and what’s what, though such activity validates the technologies. Other developments this quarter included HP’s impending presence in the cloud computing and big data spaces and the realization that Intel won’t be left to die if low-power servers based on x86 processors catch on like the buzz late last year suggests they will. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Microsoft, Cloudera, SeaMicro and Facebook. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
T-Mobile is launching its first dual-core smartphone in the G2X, a 4G-capable Android 2.2 handset. I took an early video look at the graphical prowess of this LG-build phone back in January, and you can see the benefits such a chip brings to the smartphone. Read more »
Cloud computing, a surge of smartphone growth and increased wireless connectivity have created an ideal environment for the introduction of the media tablet — a consumer-grade device best suited to leisure-based computing activities such as gaming and social networking. This report forecasts the media tablet market, which is expected to grow at a 54 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. We forecast revenues and regional growth, including China’s growing importance in the market, and provide a competitive analysis of tablets from Cisco, Research in Motion, Apple, HP and others. Additional companies in this report include Samsung, Dell, Microsoft and Motorola. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
