When Nvidia announced the Tegra 4 at this year’s CES, it looked like they had taken the Tegra 3 and greatly improved upon it. Bringing Cortex -A15 and their GeForce GPUs together seemed like a great mixture. Indeed, it was but, how many devices have launched with the Tegra 4 since then? Exactly. It’s clear that Nvidia is struggling to get their chips into devices with this latest generation of their Tegra line. Of course, there’s the Nvidia Shield which is a great example of what Android and handheld devices can do but, Tegra has not been a mainstream name this year.
To that end, the company might well be launching their own tablet under the name of “Tegra Tab”. It’s been leaked throughout the Internet over in China and now there are some images of the device. Apparently, it’s a 7-inch type device, with a rear-facing camera that’s powered by none other than the Tegra 4 running at 1.8 Ghz. According to The Verge, the tablet is apparently going to be made by Shenzhen Homecare Technology, a company which recently announced that they were making a Tegra 4 tablet with a stylus.
While this would mean that the device is more than likely to stay inside Asia, this doesn’t appear to be the case as Nvidia registered the “Tegra Tab” trademark in the US back in April. While taking on the Nexus 7 is probably not their goal here, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of besting it, with a stylus slot and a micro-HDMI port. There’s nothing too fantastic about a micro-HDMI port but, the inclusion of a stylus here is interesting.
With the Tegra Tab, Nvidia might be looking to get into the hardware game themselves, as they continue to struggle to find partners for their chips. This might not be such a bad idea, either. Going their own route, Nvidia would be able to focus on the gaming side of things – something they’re pretty good at – and develop the best tablet they can to show off their processors.
The question is, would you buy something like this with a new Nexus 7 out there?