14 DAY TRIAL // Not so long ago, we brought you news NVIDIA was refreshing its popular Tegra Note 7 tablet by adding LTE connectivity. Now the tablet has been spotted in the wild at MWC 2014, alongside a reference design running the new Tegra K1 processor.
The new slate will be compatible with LTE networks of popular carriers around the world, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, O2, Vodafone and Orange. The tablet will be made available in Q2 and will come running Android 4.2.2 out of the box.
Anyway, we managed to track the new slate down and snap a few pictures of it. Basically, the standard Tegra Note 7 design is maintained, but the slate now sports a new i500 chip that provides LTE/4G support.
We tested the tablet and it ran smoothly, just like its predecessor. The tablet comes bundled with the same smart pen that takes advantage of the DirectStylus technology and is really fun to use because, unlike other styluses, it’s not pressure sensitive.
Instead, the stylus has an asymmetrical tip which creates different degrees of thickness depending on which angle is used.
Drawing or writing text with the stylus is pretty intuitive and it feels like you’d be writing with a real life pen. You can do the same with your fingers, but since skin is flexible, the screen won’t be able to make out how thin you want your lines to be.
Moving on to the Tegra K1-powered prototype, this is a more refined version of the demo showcased at IFA 2013 in September. We do know it’s going to be launched somewhere in Q2 of the year and the slate has already appeared in benchmarks not so long.
Judging but what we saw, the tablet will be able to provide a console-level gaming experience which is an interesting thing, but we’re not sure if there’s yet a market for tablet bundling console-level graphics.
The prototype comes boasting a full HD display (1920 x 1200) as opposed to the model currently on the market (and the LTE one) which has only 1280 x 800 pixels.
Besides being powered by the new NVIDIA K1 processor (based on ARM Cortex A15 architecture clocked up to 2.3GHz), the reference design has been fitted with 2GB of RAM and backed up by 16GB of internal storage.
We should remind you that the tablet scored 38,323 points in the AnTuTu benchmark, while the Tegra K1 has managed to reach 41,000 points in full clock mode, so this will surely be one beast of a “small” tablet.
