Currently, Cat 4 LTE isn’t deployed on any carrier in the US, so the demo was essentially just a proof of concept. Through software optimizations only, NVIDIA has certainly been hard at work to ensure tha the Tegra 4i will be ready for Cat 4 LTE to entice OEMs to use its solution over some of the competition. Of course, the Tegra 4i’s integrated modem is great, but that’s hardly it’s only trick.

This is one of the most powerful processors for mobile devices around in terms of both raw processing power and graphics, and NVIDIA will soon bring Qualcomm some serious competition when it debuts.

For more information about NVIDIA’s latest CTIA demos, hit up the link below!

[Via: NVIDIA Blog]

This certainly bodes well for the company. The Shield a rather niche product, but it’s a product that not only bridges the gap between mobile and console gaming, but a product that people want to spend their money. We don’t blame them, either. The $349 price point also may not be easy to swallow for some, but it certainly won’t stop the real gamers from throwing down the greenbacks. That’s one of the best things about the Shield, and NVIDIA. The Shield is for gamers, by gamers, and there’s something great about that.

If you’re already sold on the NVIDIA Shield, you can now get your pre-order on now and not have to wait until next monday, and you better do so fast. The device is getting more and more buzz, so pre-ordering the device is a good option if you want to be the first to get the device.

Be sure to hit up NVIDIA’s blog post below for more details!

Who is pre-ordering the Shield today?

[Via: NVIDIA Blog]

If you decided to sign up for the news letter at Shield.NVIDIA.com, you can pre-order the Shield right now. The general pre-order will begin on May 20th.

Thinking the price of the Shield is a bit steep? It’s not. There’s so much power put into this device that it could have landed at $450+ — somewhere near the price of a new tablet. The specs of the device make the Shield worth every penny. Still, as excited as we are, the jury is still out as to how the gamers will feel about the price point.

If for whatever reason you’ve missed us geeking out about the Shield before, the device is possibly one of the most interesting pieces of hardware we’ve seen grace the Android landscape. The NVIDIA Shield offers up a full-sized gaming controller, with a 5-inch, 720p HD multi-touch display accompanying it. Running stock Android, the Shield gives you access to over 700k applications on the Google Play Store and is a mobile gaming monster.

That’s not all, though. The most unique feature about the Shield is that it can stream Steam games from your NVIDIA GTX-powered PC right to the Shield over Wi-Fi. You no longer need to wish that Assassin’s Creed III or BioShock Infinite were mobile games. With the NVIDIA Shield, they are.

Here are some more key features for the NVIDIA Shield:

• Tegra 4 – the world’s fastest mobile processor, Tegra 4 packs 72 custom GPU cores and four Cortex-A15 CPU cores
• Console-grade controller – dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttons

• High Fidelity Audio and Video –5-inch, 720p retinal multi-touch display and custom bass reflex tuned port audio system
• Memory and Storage – 2GB RAM, 16GB internal flash storage and microSD storage slot
• Android Jelly Bean  – the latest Android Jelly Bean operating system
• And More! – 802.11n 2X2 MIMO game-speed Wi-Fi , GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, mini-HDMI, micro-USB 2.0 and 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack

Not only is the NVIDIA Shield one of the most powerful mobile devices around, its bridging the gap between mobile and PC gaming. If that’s not something to get excited about, I’m not sure what is.

You’ll soon be able to grab the Shield at  Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center and Canada Computers.

The updated Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 is said to feature the following specifications

• 10-inch 1080p HD display
• 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro
• 1 GB RAM
• 13 megapixel rear camera
• 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera
• 16 GB internal memory
• Micro SD card slot
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• LTE support
• 5,050 mAh battery
• Android Jelly Bean

The updated set of specifications will be more than welcomed if Asus give the Smart Pad 10 successor the same price point, which we’d hope it would. The display, CPU, and camera bumps will certainly turn some heads in the budget tablet market, as these specs are normally found in higher-end tablets. However, I personally would wish that Asus stayed with NVIDIA for this tablet, as there’s a nice helping of Tegra Zone games that one either can’t play on a non-Tegra tablet, or will feature less robust graphics.

Rumors are pointing that the Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 successor could hit as soon as the summer.

Any takers?

[Via: UnwiredView]

At a media event in Beijing, Qualcomm stated that its next generation Snapdragon 800 processor will enter mass production in late May, according to Engadget. Unfortunately, benchmarks were not available for Qualcomm’s new chip, but the company claims that they will be available in June of this year.

The Snapdragon will no doubt be a powerful chipset, but NVIDIA’s upcoming Tegra 4i looks promising as well, and could give Qualcomm a run for their money.

[Via: Engadget]

NVIDIA was tasked with optimizing the Tegra 4i in just 22 days, a feat that was by no means modest. NVIDIA gathered over 120 of its engineers from around the globe to their headquarters in sunny Santa Clara, and began work on their momentous task. The team toiled day and night, determined to make the Tegra 4i a reality. In almost no time, they had Linux booting on the system, and had added a touch screen input. A short time later the software modem sent a text message to NVIDIA’s CEO. The Tegra 4i, codenamed “Grey” was coming to life.

NVIDIA pulled it off, proudly displaying a working demo of their incredible Tegra 4i chip at MWC, which was housed inside a reference phone named “Phoenix,” thanks to the engineers and design team.

Tegra 4i chips are expected to be included in future budget and tablets, hopefully by the end of this year. The chip has 60 custom GPU cores, with a max clock speed of 2.3 GHz. The integrated modem technology allows the chip to support LTE and HSPA+, as well as a variety of other bands, allowing for extended battery life while utilizing a data connection.

One thing is for sure, NVIDIA has one heck of an engineering and design team, and will help define the development of mobile devices in the future. We can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

[Via: NVIDIA Blog] [Image: FanPop]

The THD stand for “Tegra High Definition” and the Play store description touts the advantages of this Tegra 3 version:

“This Tegra-based version delivers amazing high-end graphics with all of the following:

The Rim Lighting feature, which yields more dramatic actions and movements by bringing brilliant highlights to character outlines in backlit scenes.

Enhanced photorealism and three-dimensionality of characters with the Bloom feature, which produces a stunning diffusion of light in extremely bright conditions.

A depth of field created by focusing the camera on the character and blurring both background and foreground, lending even more realism to the game.

Twice the resolution of other versions of the game, resulting in higher-quality and sharper graphics across the board.”

The gameplay is pretty similar to Elite Beat Agents or Oendan with well-timed tapping advancing you through the battles. But the style is very different. Where those games had a cute, cartoony style, Demon’s Score is 3D rendered using the Unreal 3 engine. And it’s pretty…. dark. I’ll just let the trailer speak for itself.

[Via: Google Play]

Powered by the NVIDIA Tegra 4, the Shield is an insanely powerful device that is unlike anything on the market today. While you’ll have access to every application in the Google Play Store, including exclusive and optimized Tegra games, the Shield stands out with the ability to play games that are streamed from PCs that have Kepler GPUs. A PC utilizing one of the Kepler GPUs essentially acts as your very own NVIDIA Grid for your device.

Streaming games from the PC to the Shield shows no lag whatsoever, and it’s like you’ve installed the game directly onto the device. And while this feature alone makes the Shield something to be desired by gamers all around the world, it’s the inclusion of a full controller on the device that makes it the beast of a gaming machine that it is.

The Shield offers up a console-like gaming controller that’s attached to the 5-inch HD display. This will offer up a complete gaming experience that you can take with you at all times. Using the controller feels just like you’re holding a Xbox or Playstation controller, but it also has a few more options for volume control and back and home buttons for Android.

Overall, we’re very impressed with NVIDIA’s Project Shield. There’s currently nothing like it on the market, and while Sony has plans to push this sort of feature to the PS Vita, it’s simply not there yet. We’re more than excited for the Shield to be released, which we hope is sooner rather than later. In the mean time, I’ll be slowly upgrading all the components in my older computer tower, complete with Kepler GPU.

Gamers interested in the Shield : How much would you be willing to pay for one?

Ravensword brings unprecedented visuals to the role playing and adventure genre. Explore a vast and richly detailed world, gather powerful weapons, collect hundreds of items, increase your skills, and follow a deep storyline to solve the mysteries of the Kingdom of Tyreas.

Once you first launch Ravensword: Shadowlands, you’ll be greeted with some very nice graphics to begin with, but Tegra devices get a few more tweaks to make the experience even more immersive, like realtime shadows, bloom effects, and ragdoll physics.

Ravensword: Shadowlands is definitely a game that you’ll be playing for hours and has a ton of replay value, so don’t let the $6.99 pricetag fool you.

If you’re looking for a great new RPG game on your Android device, make sure that you give Ravensword: Shadowlands a go. You won’t be disappointed. Grab your Nexus 7 and get to playing!

Check out the game’s TegraZone page right here!

NVIDIA is pushing cloud based services heavily, especially pertaining to cloud based gaming. In his keynote speech, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsen Huang proclaimed, referring to devices, “if we can’t light them all, we can stream to the rest of them.” This ambitious goal is powered by the GRID, NVIDIA’s cloud based gaming and computing solution.

Thanks to the GRID, we are no longer tethered to the processing power of our physical devices. NVIDIA’s GRID allows games to be played on a variety of devices. The GRID is essentially a cloud based gaming server which renders and streams the game to the user’s device. We saw this technology running on Smart TV’s, MacBooks, tablets as well as PC laptops. Utilizing NVIDIA’s new GPU virtualization technology, the GRID can serve up to 36 HD quality streams from one server. The GRID offers a variety of titles available for play, making owning physical copies of games a thing of the past. Players can also start and stop games on multiple devices.

There’s no doubt that the GRID has the potential to change the gaming landscape, bringing us into an era of gaming that is no longer reliant on set-top boxes and hardware limitations. Are you excited about cloud based gaming? Will you ditch your console? Sound off in the comments below!

The technology is being referenced as “the world’s first computational photography architecture” , and will be functional on any Tegra 4 powered device, and will be compatible with existing and new apps that utilize the Tegra.

Chimera will allow for the capture of HDR panoramic photos, auto-focus and the coolest feature, tap-to track. Tap-to-track is an amazing feature, which allows users to tap on an object in the picture and have the software track it in real-time, auto-focusing and adjusting the shot according to the location of the selected object. This feature makes it a snap to take quality HDR pictures while trying to capture moving objects in any lighting situation.

Check out the video below to see Chimera in action, and expect to see this technology to be utilized soon in Tegra 4 powered devices.