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NVIDIA Tegra 3 May Power Google's Next Nexus Smartphone

NVIDIA Tegra 3 May Power Google's Next Nexus Smartphone

By Marvin Ferrell El
May 13, 2011

Tegra 3 is ideal for Ice Cream Sandwhich

Google’s Nexus development cycle has been spot on with the previous two Nexus devices and its a pretty good way to predict the release of the next addition to the “Google Experience” line of products. That being said we have known for quite some time now that the 4th quarter of this year would be when we see the “Nexus 3” or the third Nexus phone in Google’s line of devices. Speculation as to what will power the phone has been going on for a little while now and comments from NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang seem to point to Tegra 3 being the brains behind the highly anticipated handset.

“.. we’re working very closely with Google on Ice Cream Sandwich, and it’s a very important new generation of operating system based on starting from the Honeycomb base and I’m expecting it to be really terrific. And so we’re working very closely with the Google team, and Tegra will be surely be wonderful for Ice Cream when it comes.”

What he seems to be insinuating here is that NVIDIA is the go to processor as far as Google is concerned for the Ice Cream Sandwich build of the Android OS and if this is the case then logically it will power the premier ICS device the Nexus 3. I’ll quote Andy Rubin Senior VP of mobile at the big G.

“The Nexus has been the thing that we used to set the bar, and there’s always going to be new ones coming out in the market…we’ll make an announcement at some point in the future.”

Tegra 3? What’s the big idea?

At I/O we learned that ICS will be optimal with a little extra processing power behind it though backwards compatibility with current handsets is something they are shooting for with the OS. So just how much extra power does the NVIDIA Tegra 3 look to bring to bare.

  • It;s the worlds first Quad Core processor (yes 4 cores!)
  • Its packing a 12-core NVIDIA graphics processing unit with 3-D stereo support
  • Extreme HD 2560×1600 resolution
  • 5x more power and speed than the Tegra 2

I don’t know about you but I’m very exciting about the next generation of Android phones and it looks like the Nexus 3 will be setting the bar for those this winter. We are keeping our eyes on the bug-droid who I will continue to call Andy despite the sudden name change and we will have the latest info right here as always. Later folks.