Nvidia Unveils Its Own 7" Tegra Note Tablet 56
crookedvulture writes "Nvidia has already produced a gaming handheld based on its quad-core Tegra 4 SoC. Today, the company announced plans to build a 7" Tegra Note tablet that uses the same chip. Rather than selling the tablet itself, Nvidia will make the device available through parters like EVGA and PNY. Asking price: $199. That seems a little steep given the Tegra Note's 1280x800 display resolution, which delivers a much lower PPI than the 1080p panel in the latest Nexus 7. But the Tegra Note does have some perks, including front-facing speakers, Micro HDMI output, microSD expansion, and an optional stylus. The tablet also boasts a fancy camera that taps into the Tegra chip's photography engine. Nvidia promises to keep the device updated with the latest versions of Android, too. You can expect to see the Tegra Note for sale worldwide in the next few months."
Re:Never trust Nvidia to not screw their customers (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, you can probably safely generalize that to 'never trust any tech company to not screw its customers'.
Sooner or later they all can (and will) leave you holding the bag.
Which is precisely I never want to be an early adopter of technology, because you never really know how long it will last.
Re:1920x1200 is awesome but not THAT awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to agree.
However first, I don't buy the "I can't see the pixels so its not worth it" argument. I mean when I see a screen with high pixel density vs one that doesn't, it just looks fucking better, period. I may not be able to differentiate individual fucking pixels, but a lot of stuff looks crisper, and more importantly, you can fit more content on the screen because it remains clear and readable even if its smaller. Try to render 8pt text on a VGA display, you are not going to read the bits and blogs of characters struggling to display on low res shitvision. Games are more detailed with the higher resolution than on a screen with less pixel density.
But where I DO agree, especially on the Android platform, NOBODY authors content for these high pixel density displays. I mean I have the Nexus 10 which has higher pixel density then this thing, and yet 90% of the content I use on it is simply authored for less pixel density and scaled up. Games look like crap because they simply double or quadruple the scaling, turning shitty low res graphics into even shittier high resolution garbage.
This is part of the problem with Android as a platform because there is no consistency across all the devices for screen size and pixel density. When Apple comes out with "Retina" for the iPad or iPhone, everybody authors content to look good on the Retina display. When even Google comes out with a high pixel density device, people just author content for some shitty cheap Android phone released 5 years ago.
So while I don't buy the whole theory behind not seeing individual pixels bullshit, for the most part most Android shit is going to still look like shit regardless of how many pixels you throw at it.
Hopefully because this is a tablet inspired by a graphic's card company they might also be rolling out a development platform that allows Android game designers to actually author quality content that takes advantage of high pixel density. But from what I have seen from other nVidia device's released recently, I just don't think they bothered with much more then putting their name on some OEM commissioned product.