From what we can gather, this will not be an entry-level consumer tablet like the Nexus 7 (that Asus also produces), but rather a more business-oriented 10-inch tablet. It’s also likely that they’ll come up with a better product name than the ME301T MemoPad 10, so it’s possible that it’ll fall under the Transformer Pad family in some fashion.

As far as the specs go, there will be an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad core processor, 1280×800 pixel 10.1-inch display, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of on-board storage. It will likely be offered in WiFi-only and WiFi+3G flavors, in your choice of white, blue and fuchsia. The leaked price from some retailers in Spain and Denmark have in the 300 Euro range, which translates to just over $400 US.

These specs pretty much run par for the mid-range course at the moment, so hopefully Asus has some unique business-oriented tricks up its sleeve to make this tablet stand out from the crowd.

[Source]

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When a typical new video game console hits the market, you can usually expect to spend several hundred dollars to buy it. You might even remember the frenzy surrounding the PS3 launch with systems going for up to $2,000 on eBay. The Ouya is not that kind of video game console. It’s only $100.

The unassuming silver box will be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and a NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor. There is 1GB of RAM to go along with 8GB of flash storage, HDMI, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a wireless controller that looks similar to that of the OnLive console or the Xbox 360 controller. Those specs make it sound like a pretty decent smartphone or tablet, but this is meant to be a home gaming console.

Perhaps the even bigger kicker is that there is an open SDK where they promise to provide digitally-delivered titles for free. I imagine the marketplace will start with a handful of freeware titles and free-to-try games, but it has to open up to paid games eventually. In any case, the Ouya is only $100 and it’ll be interesting to see how it fares in an environment where we’ve grown accustomed to Android games on the go. Does this spell eventual doom for the Wii U, PS4, and Xbox 720?

[ Uncrate via Kickstarter ]

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Rumors about a so-called Nexus tablet from Google have been flying around for a while. What you see above comes to us from Pocketnow and the pictured device is purported to be the search giant’s upcoming tablet. Could it be the cheap stock Android Nexus tablet meant to compete against the new iPad?

As we reported earlier, the Nexus tablet (or whatever it will be called, if it’s coming that is) is expected to have a 7-inch display and will be coming from Asus sometime this summer. If this is indeed the Nexus tablet that we are looking at, it looks more like a ten-inch slate.

It looks like it has some qualities of an upcoming Google tablet. The generic Ice Cream Sandwich OS is displaying only official ICS and Google apps; there are no third party apps or widgets visible.

But, anyone who is an expert in Photoshop can create such an image very accurately, and also we are suspicious about the presence of the Android Market icon instead of the Google Play Store (yes, it could mean that it’s an older render too). The folks over at Pocketnow are also not talking about a source. That does not mean that the image is a fake, but the image does not provide us with any good evidence to prove that it is real.

There are no hints about specs, price or the release date, but previous rumors point towards a device with a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and a $199 price tag.

Just to let you know, Android Community is saying that the above device looks similar to the 7.7-inch Tegra 3 tablet from Toshiba which was shown off at CES.

The post Rumored Google Nexus Tablet Could Be A Ten-Inch Device appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It’s always fun when a giveaway is announced and it’s even better when what will be available for free is a popular Android tablet. Our friends at Ubergizmo have announced that they have partnered with NVIDIA for giving away two Asus Transformer Prime tablets (for two winners) and you just have to post a comment to participate.

You have to place a comment here (valid email address or Facebook profile is needed) and if you are lucky, your name will be selected in the draw and you will win a $499.99 NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core Asus Transformer Prime and a $149 keyboard dock accessory. You can comment about anything, but it will be great if you talk about why you are interested in the tablet. Just to let you know, there are already 968 comments over there and more will keep on coming, but there’s certainly nothing to lose by typing a few words and imagining about playing with the device in the future.

But, as always, there are rules. The following are the main ones:

The draw is open to legal residents of US (50 states) and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 and older. (If you are from some other country, you might have international friends who can participate.)

The deadline to place your comment is Wednesday March 28 2012, at 23:59pm PT. (But we know that you have already placed your comment.)

Head here to check out all the rules.

And good luck!

The post Asus Transformer Primes Giveaway By Our Uber Friends appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

That’s exactly what Laptop Mag wanted to find out, so they pit the new iPad against the Tegra 3-powered Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. First, they ran GLBenchmark 2.1. This revealed that the A5X on the iPad 3 was able to render twice as many frames per second on the Egypt test and it was able to handle more than four times as many texels (texture pixels). So, for pure graphical prowess, the A5X seems like the winner.

However, when they had a look at integer and floating point performance, the Tegra 3 blew the A5X out of the water. It also outclassed Apple’s chip for memory performance, with the exception of memory bandwidth.

But what about the real world? They played Shadowgun and Riptide GP on both tablets and, well, it’s a mixed bag. The Retina display on the iPad provided crisper text and better colors, but the Asus had some visual effects not present in the Apple-friendly version of the games. Check out the video below.

[Source]

The post Benchmarked and Compared: NVIDIA Tegra 3 vs. Apple A5X appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There’s a lesson to be learned in the video game industry these days. Nostalgia is lucrative. Just take what was once a successful formula, jazz it up with some prettier graphics, retain the classic style gameplay, and you’ve got yourself a winner. Street Fighter did it. Mario Kart did it. And so did Sonic.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 has been pretty big for Sega, but they skipped out on the Android love for that title. That’s changing for the next chapter, as Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II is being launched on Android some time this year. They’re saying that the game will be made available to Tegra 3 devices, allowing gamers to take full advantage of the “improved architecture” of the new chip, getting more graphically-intense action for the speedy blue devil.

For now, the only officially announced Android device with NVIDIA Tegra 3 is the Asus Transformer Prime tablet, but I’m sure a huge slate of Tegra 3 devices will be unveiled next week at CES. I imagine a slightly less graphically intense version of S4:EII will be available for the rest of us Android folk too, plus the versions for iOS and home consoles. I’m just waiting for a graphically-intense version of Columns.

Here’s the teaser trailer.

The post Sega Promises Sonic 4: Episode II For Tegra 3 Android Devices appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Tegra 2 processor from NVIDIA has found itself in a huge assortment of smartphones and tablets, quickly becoming one of the most preferred dual core chips for that segment. Even though Tegra 2 is still relatively new, Tegra 3 is just around the corner and it looks like Asus could be getting first dibs at Kal-El.

As you may recall, Kal-El (inspired by Superman) is the codename for Tegra3 and it’s part of a longer roadmap with more superhero-inspired codenames. What we’re hearing now is that the first device to launch with Tegra 3 will be the next-generation Asus Eee Pad Transformer Android tablet. The current (first) gen Eee Pad Transformer has been a huge hit, partly because it undercut similar devices like the Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1 by $100 or more right at launch. Now, the others have had to follow it down to the $399 start point.

I’d imagine that Asus will be very happy to follow up that success with an even faster tablet powered by the quad-core 40nm Tegra 3 chip. What’s interesting is that the quad-core chip is actually more efficient than its dual-core Tegra 2 cousin, consuming less power and thus extending battery life. Considering that I can easily get three days out of the Eee Pad Transformer I’ve been using (when attached to the keyboard dock), the second-gen model with Kal-El is sounding even more appealing.

Look for the Eee Pad Transformer 2 and its other Tegra 3-based compatriots to start hitting retailers in the first quarter of next year.

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