Nvidia showed its Tegra 4i prototype -- the mid-range SoC for mid-range phones at mid-range pricing.
Back in February, Nvidia announced what was to be their next generation in the Tegra Mobile SoC lineup: the Tegra 4i. As we have not seen any devices equipped with the chip thus far, Nvidia decided to show off a prototype Tegra 4i smartphone in June. Since its reveal, we now have more details on the SoC and prototype phone.
The phone chosen to show off the chip has mid-range features: a 4.8-inch 720p screen, along with 1 GB of RAM, a 13 Mpx rear camera, internal storage of 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB, and with a 7.8 mm thinness, has an appropriate expected price range of between $300 and $400. OEM versions of the device is expected around Q1 of 2014.
The phone chosen to show off the chip has mid-range features: a 4.8-inch 720p screen, along with 1 GB of RAM, a 13 Mpx rear camera, internal storage of 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB, and with a 7.8 mm thinness, has an appropriate expected price range of between $300 and $400. OEM versions of the device is expected around Q1 of 2014.
With the standard specs out of the way, we can focus on the actual chip that the phone highlights. The Tegra 4i is a 28 nm chip that runs on the fourth revision of ARM's Cortex A9 (instead of the Tegra 4's A15), which provides a 15 to 30 percent CPU speed increase over the previous versions, according to Nvidia. The Cortex A9 is a quad-core CPU clocked at 2.3 GHz, while the 60-core graphics unit comes from the Geforce ULP. The chip can utilize LPDDR2 RAM, and has integrated 4G LTE radios, allowing devices equipped with it (including the above prototype) to have 4G LTE support standard on the SoC.
