14 DAY TRIAL // A few months ago NVIDIA unveiled its second slate, the Shield Tablet, which was targeted at gamers, but not only.
The device arrives with an 8-inch Full HD IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution (not 1920 x 1080).
Under the hood lives NVIDIA’s latest powerhouse, the Tegra K1 SoC (193-core Kepler GPU on a quad-core ARM Cortex A15 die with 2.3GHz frequency) fitted with 2GB of DDR3 RAM and a micro card slot (supporting up to 128GB).
Anyway, even as the tablet hasn't been out and about for long, there’s plenty of action happening around it. For example, this week the Shield Tablet is getting its first custom ROMs.
But before getting to the custom ROM part, you’ll need root access which is bestowed upon us via the Towel Root app. Custom recovery is also provided by an unofficial ClockWorkMod recovery port and can be found on the lofty xda-developers forum.
Once this is out of the way, you can go ahead and take a stroll through custom ROM wonderland. For the time being, there are two source-built ROMs available for the NVIDIA Shield Tablet, in the form of the VanirAOSP ROM and the AICP ROM.
Installing one of these ROMs should bring about some interesting tweaks and improvements such as UI and graphics improvements, enhanced performance, additional quicksettings tiles and more.
However, you should be warned that if you decide to go ahead and install a custom ROM, this action will void your warranty. There’s also the risk of something bad happening to your device, so take this into consideration before you start the process.
Lately, the NVIDIA Shield Tablet has been in the news a lot. Just last week, we got word that the tablet received its first software update which focuses on stabilization and optimization.
The new build brought about a new feature called the NVIDIA PRISM (Pixel Rendering Intensity and Saturation Management), which is a system used to lower the tab’s backlight while trying to boost pixel color.
But not all news is good news. Also last week, it was revealed that a lot of owners of the brand new slate were complaining on GeForce forums that their tabs have started to crack.
While the problem is of cosmetic nature and does not affect the devices’ performance, NVIDIA has acknowledged the issue and offered to replace the affected slates free of charge. So if you are dealing with the issue, you should contact your local representative.