Computex 2011: MSI's Brazos, Cedar Trail and Tegra 2 Tablets

I met with MSI yesterday, a company that has been going through a bit of an  identity crisis as of late. ASUS is the only motherboard manufacturer that really made the transition from a component vendor to something more than that. MSI is trying its best to go back to its roots and develop a strategy that will work for it in the long run.

Tablets are of course a big deal these days and MSI had a number of tablets in its Windpad line on display.

 First off we have the Windpad 120W, a Cedar Trail based tablet (32nm Atom). Unfortunately, although Intel promised fanless designs for Cedar Trail it looks like the Windpad 120W will use a small, slow spinning fan to help keep it cool. The 10-inch tablet will have WiDi support for wireless video streaming similar to what you can get on an Arrandale or Sandy Bridge notebook today. It's unclear what formats or resolutions will be supported. Presumably Cedar Trail isn't going to have the transcoding performance of a Sandy Bridge so you should lower your expectations for WiDi on Atom accordingly. Pricing and availability are TBD on the 120W.

 Next up is a Brazos version of the 120W, the Windpad 110W. We get a similar chassis but a C-series APU inside. Pricing will be around $599 for the Windows 7 equipped tablet. Finally, MSI also has its Windpad 100A, a Tegra 2 based tablet running Android. Currently the tablet is running 2.3.3, however MSI's goal is to release it either with Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich late this year. The industrial design on the Windpad will change by then, hopefully to a thinner form factor. 

 We'll see a sooner release from MSI running Gingerbread, in a chassis that likely looks very similar to what you see here. {gallery 1106}]]>

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Why all mobiles and tablets uses Nvidia Tegra Chipsets

Today’s every mobile and tablet manufacturers uses Nvidia Tegra Chipsets because it brings extreme multitasking with the first mobile dual-core CPU, the best mobile Web experience with up to two times faster browsing, hardware accelerated Flash, and console-quality gaming with an ultra-low power (ULP) NVIDIA GeForce GPU delivers outstanding mobile 3D game playability and a visually engaging, highly-responsive 3D user interface.

There are four reasons Why all mobiles and tablets uses Nvidia Tegra Chipsets and also provide the ultimate realistic experience to the users.

1.Extreme Multitasking -do more faster

Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, E-mail, Pictures, Movies — everyone is multitasking. And as mobile devices become your primary computing device, you expect the same snappiness and performance that you get on your PC.

2.Web with Flash - The best mobile Web experience

Surf the Web in all its multimedia glory. Web pages and Flash-based content load up to two times faster so you never have to skip a beat.

3.Console Gaming Quality - Take your gaming on the road

For the first time ever, get console-quality gaming on your mobile device and the fastest graphics performance. Whether you're into racing games, sports games, or even role-playing games (RPGs), experience the future of mobile gaming on your NVIDIA Tegra powered super phone or tablet.

4.HD Video- HD movies, games and more — big time

Watch 1080p HD movies, photos, games on your mobile devices without compromising battery life.

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Samsung's Tegra 2 Superphone: The GT-I9103

On Day 0 of this year's Mobile World Congress Samsung and NVIDIA announced that the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 will come to market with NVIDIA's Tegra 2 (T20) SoC. At the same time, the two quietly announced they would be working on a new superphone together also based on Tegra 2. At Samsung's press conference however all we saw was the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy S II, the latter using Samsung's own Exynos SoC.

So what happened to the NVIDIA based smartphone and why would Samsung bother with using Tegra if it already had an Exynos based smartphone? To understand why we need to look at the Galaxy S. At its MWC press conference Samsung mentioned that it sold 10 million Galaxy S phones in 2010. The Galaxy S II should sell at least as much, if not more, once it's officially introduced.

Exynos however is a brand new SoC, with a brand new GPU for Samsung. Meeting demand for the Galaxy S II in all markets across the world with an SoC that Samsung has never shipped is risky at best. If you saw our benchmarks yesterday you'll note that NVIDIA's Tegra 2 is a near equivalent in terms of CPU performance and notably better in GPU and Flash performance. In other words, Tegra 2 isn't a bad alternative.

Meet the GT-I9103:

The GT-I9100 is the normal Exynos based Galaxy S II, the I9103 is the Tegra 2 edition. As one of our readers (thanks sarge78), Samsung lists its own dual-core Application Processor in the Galaxy S II as not being used in all regions. It's too early to tell if that means that we'll get Tegra 2 or Exynos depending on physical region.

I suspect Samsung didn't want to confuse users by announcing both a Tegra 2 and an Exynos based superphone at MWC. An unknown user managed to benchmark the GT-I903 at MWC and submitted the data to the GLBenchmark database. The GT-I9103's performance looks comparable to the Atrix 4G, meaning it's going to deliver the same experience we've seen in our Optimus 2X and Atrix 4G articles.

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This Just In: LG Optimus 2X, Our First Tegra 2 Smartphone

It's been 22 days since we saw the Tegra 2 packing LG Optimus 2X at CES, and just moments ago the device arrived at our doorsteps ready for a thorough reviewing. It's out of the box and charging now, ready to enter our battery life tests, but before that we managed to grab a bunch of photos and a few quick benchmarks. 

Read on for our super brief preview, and stay tuned for the full review.

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NVIDIA's Tegra 2 Take Two: More Architectural Details and Design Wins

Twelve months ago NVIDIA stood on stage at CES and introduced its Tegra 2 SoC. It promised dozens of design wins and smartphones shipping before Spring 2010. That obviously did not happen.

What instead happened was NVIDIA lost a number of design wins, many of which we centered around mobile OSes other than Android. There were a number of Windows Mobile/Windows CE based designs that never made it to market, and a lot of efforts around earlier versions of Android that never went anywhere.

In the time since NVIDIA’s CES 2010 announcement, the company has shifted resources and focused its entire Tegra team on a single OS: Android. Choosing Android isn’t a hard decision to understand, of all of the available smartphone OS options it has the most momentum behind it.

Read on for more coverage of NVIDIA's Tegra 2 announcements at CES.

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Hands On With Motorola's Tegra 2 Devices: Atrix 4G, Droid Bionic, XOOM Tablet

Today Motorola unveiled 4 new Android based devices during their press conference at CES today; three smartphones and 1 tablet.  We were able to get some limited hands on time with these devices at the end of the conference today.  

The first device, the Atrix 4G was announced earlier this morning during AT&T's press event but we do have a few more details about this smartphone and its "webtop" peripherals. Read on for our take on the device.]]>

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