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The Tegra was the original powerhouse in the mobile world powering the soon to be Microsoft Kin Mobile phones and also that “not for Britain” PMP the Zune HD. With stiff competition from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, mobile Intel chips and ARM, all good at what they do. TEGRA never failed to impress in its reviews and actions delivering application speed and HD video with ease.

Now Nvidia are planning to release the next TEGRA chip sometime this year, hoping to launch in conjunction with the 3rd generation of Android. Yes that’s right rather than sticking with Microsoft NVIDIA has obviously spotted the potential in Google’s OS and it’s rise in popularity in the mobile market. Co-Founder Jen-Hsun Huang has said that the future holds plenty of TEGRA powered Android phones and tablets to confirm this. He’s also gone on to point out that their main rival will be the iPad and it’s chipset the A4, currently the iPad’s chip and the planned next processor to be in the iPhone 4.0.

“The bar is pretty high for all the mobile players and they need a processor that can keep up with the A4. If not be much better than what the A4 can do because they have to take on the leader in the space.” – Huang on the Apple A4 processor

“I think the second generation Tegra has been doing incredibly well because Android is doing incredibly well. So we’re going to come to market with second-generation Tegra with the third generation Android.” Huang on Tegra and Android.

Certainly will make for a more interesting competition in the future for sure.

Microsoft have announce its Zune HD will be powered by Nvidia’s Tegra chipset giving the OLED PMP brilliant visuals, great performance and better battery life which we all know is a massice problem when playing video on a PMP. Nvidia’s Tegra can give 1080p output on HDMI. The Zune itself will only do 720p playback but if its powered by the Tegra, this will give the Zune great rendering capabilities and it will be interesting to see how the UI can get the full potential of it.

Microsoft has kept quiet on the full specifications of the Zune HD but on an official Zune Insider Podcast, presenter Matt Akers said the Zune was “like a mini laptop in your hand” after confirming that it would indeed use the Nvidia Tegra. Still waiting for a UK release date and price…….. can’t wait!!

Zdnet are reporting some very interesting information about the rumoured Microsoft Pink Phone.

While the Pink Phone has not been confirmed the rumours are largely fuelled by the specification for the Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1.

According to Znet they received the following specification from a “trustworthy source”

WM7 Chassis 1 Specification

Core requirements:
Processor: ARM v6+, L2 Cache, VFP, Open GL ES 2.0 graphics HW (QCOM 8k, Nvidia AP15/16(AKA Tagra) and TI 3430 all meet spec)
Memory: 256MB+ DRAM, 1G+ Flash (at least 512MB fast flash – 5MB/s unbuffered read @4K block size)
Display:  WVGA (800×480) or FWVGA (854×480) 3.5” or greater diagonal
Touch: Multi-touch required
Battery: Sufficient to meet Days of Use LTK requirements.
Controls: Start, Back, Send and End are required (soft controls allowed as long as they are always present).

Peripherals:
Camera: 3MP+, flash optional, 2nd camera optional (VGA resolution sufficient)
GPS: aGPS required
Sensors required: Light Sensor, Compass (3 axis, 5 degrees, 100 Hz sample rate), Accelerometer (3 axis, 2mg resolution, 100 Hz sample rate)
USB: High speed required, 20 MB/s transfer rate.
BlueTooth: BT2.1 required, must run MSFT BT stack, CSR BlueCore6 or later recommended.
Wi-Fi: 802.11B/G required, must run MSFT Native Wi-Fi stack, Atheros 6002 or Broadcomm 4325 recommended.
Connectors: Micro USB and 3.5mm Audio required.

Options:
FM tuner:  If tuner HW is present it will be detected and supported by the Media application.
Haptics
SD Card (Micro SD recommended)
DPAD, qwerty or 12/20 key keyboards all optional

It is strongly suspected that the reference to the QCOM 8k will be the immense Snapdragon's QSD8xxx-series chips

It is also worth noting that the NVIDIA Tegra platform is specifically listed as meeting the core CPU requirements, as well as TI's OMAP 3 platform and the Snapdragon. So in theory the hardware specification all add up, and more importantly they all add up to be a potentially awesome phone.

Neo Win are reporting some exclusive details about the new Microsoft Zune HD. They are claiming that these details have been confirmed by sources within Microsoft so in theory they should be true, which would mean we may be in for quite a treat from the new Zune HD.

Zune HD specs:

• Appoximately a 3.6 inch OLED touch screen
• NVIDIA Tegra processor/gpu
• 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB versions
• HDMI Connection to stream straight to your TV
• HD Radio.
• Web Browser.
• WiFi compatible, with wireless marketplace.
• Released, early fall.
• International Release
• Home AV packs, Car packs, Charge packs.

Image from Engadget