It feels like only yesterday that we were all drooling over the performance capabilities of NVIDIA Tegra 2 and how its dual-coreness blows single-cores out of the water. Well, get ready to be blown away again, this time by NVIDIA’s Project Kal-El. Superman fans probably get the reference.

Realistically thought of as the Tegra 2 successor, Kal-El will be the world’s first mobile quad-core CPU. NVIDIA is already sending out samples and they expect Android devices will start getting released with Kal-El under the hood this August. That’s crazy acceleration, don’t you think? Remember that both Qualcomm and TI OMAP5 aren’t going to show up on devices until 2012.

With Project Kal-El, we can expect five times the performance of Tegra 2, support for “extreme HD” (2560×1600), and silky smooth 60fps gaming on the go (compared to just 20fps on Tegra 2). In a CoreMark benchmark, Kal-El actually outperformed a true Intel Core2Duo T7200 processor by a score of 11,354 vs. 10,136.

But wait. There’s more. NVIDIA revealed its roadmap for the next few years, following up Kal-El by Wayne in 2012, Logan in 2013, and Stark in 2014. Project Stark is expected to deliver 100x the performance of Tegra 2 and that’s just three years from now. It’s a good time for mobile enthusiasts and it’ll be really interesting to see how Qualcomm and TI respond to NVIDIA’s bold moves.

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LG wasn’t very good at keeping this phone a secret, so they’ve finally let the last bit of the cat out of the bag. The LG Optimus 3D may look like any other Android smartphone but it does 3D in more ways than one.

There’s the 4.3-inch WVGA display that happens to provide for a glasses-free 3D experience not unlike the one you’d get on the soon to be released Nintendo 3DS. And there are twin 5MP lenses in the back for shooting both pictures and videos in 3D. The 3D thing still has quite the novelty factor, so we’ll have to see how pervasive this fad will become in the next couple of years.

Other specs confirmed at MWC include the 1GHz OMAP4 dual-core processor (I wonder how this compares to Tegra2), 4GB DDR2, 8GB storage, HDMI-out, DLNA support, and Android 2.2 Froyo. The Gingerbread update should be on its way too.

In case you’re frightened about a shortage of 3D content, there’s a new 3D section on YouTube that might be worth checking out. Just wait until we see 3D Chocolate Rain, 3D Bed Intruder, and 3D Freddie Wong…

[Giz]

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Set to hit production next month, the Exynos dual-core processor might have been beaten to the punch by the NVIDIA Tegra2 and it might get lost in the shadows behind a Snapdragon alternative. That said, Samsung has demonstrated its prowess in this realm with Hummingbird already.

But why Exynos? Apparently, it’s a portmanteau of exypnos and prasinos, Greek words meaning “smart” and “green,” respectively. The assumption, then, is that they’re working on lower power consumption and all that jazz too.

Exynos associates Samsung’s “smart and green” strategy adopted by its semiconductor devices and solutions developed specifically to support the stringent performance and power requirements of mobile devices. Smart refers to high-performance aspect and Green represents low power features of Samsung’s application processors. Exynos originates from the Greek words smart (exypnos) and green (prasinos).

The Exynos 4210 (once known as the Orion) will be the first chip in the line. Now we just have to wait for a quad core chip announcement to rival the TI OMAP5 line.

[Giz via Samsung

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Wireless charging isn’t exactly a new thing, but it also hasn’t taken off as much as we would have expected. You can waltz into any number of electronics retail stores and find that they are selling Powermat or some other variation on the inductive charging thing. The problem is that you have to buy a special adapter or case for every device you want to charge.

Texas Instruments is apparently trying to change that with the bqTESLA kit. This is the industry’s first Qi-certified wireless power development kit and it should be able to work with smartphones, digital cameras, and all sorts of other portable devices. Unlike Powermat, this solution is designed so that the receiver is already built into the target device.

No need for proprietary adapters for charging. By working with the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), the Qi certification on this TI development could work to promote standardization among wireless power systems. The charger takes electricity and converts it to a wireless signal. The receiver gets this wireless signal and converts it back to electricity.

The bqTESLA development kit is avaialble now from Texas Instruments, offering up to 5 watts of power at a time. TI says that you don’t need any additional software to make it work. If you’re feeling like MacGyver’ing together your own wireless solution, you can pick up one of these kits for a cool $500.

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