There’s a rumor right now that Samsung will ditch its Hummingbird chip for a Tegra 2 chip for its next gen Galaxy Tab that is supposed to launch in Q2 2011 and come with Android Honeycomb. Apparently, the reason Samsung wants to do this is because they consider Tegra 2 a better chip for gaming.
I think the power of the chip is not the whole reason. I think they want to get Tegra 2 because it’s starting to become the de facto hardware platform for tablets, which means it will be more popular with developers.
While this makes sense from that perspective, I don’t understand why they would couple a next-gen tablet of theirs with a current gen tablet chip. If they launch a tablet with Tegra 2 in Q2, they will be like the last manufacturers to show up with a Tegra 2 tablet, because soon enough Tegra 3 will be ready. Notion Ink has already promised Tegra 3 for Adam 2 tablet in summer, for example. So this Galaxy Tab 2/Tegra 2 combination doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If they really want Tegra they should just wait for Tegra 3 to launch their next gen tablet.
Another reason why it doesn’t make sense is because they will have their Orion chip ready around Q3 as well. Orion is supposedly 5x more powerful than their current Hummingbird in graphics performance. So why would they use Tegra 2 instead of Orion? And why would they even use Tegra 3 instead of Orion? If they are going to use it than that already means Tegra 3 will be more powerful than Orion.
This is in the end just a rumor and it doesn’t mean everything in it is true – if any of it – so take it all with a grain of salt until more official news.