Nvidia has been expending more resources on Tegra mobile hardware in recent years, but it was only a year ago that the company produced its first full Android device, the Nvidia Shield. While the handheld console didn’t sell huge numbers, it was a more-than-capable platform for serious gamers who wanted more mobility, and as a way for Nvidia to show off technologies like GameStream. Now, a collection of slides allegedly detailing the company’s next Shield product have launched, and this time it’s a tablet (as rumored) with an optional wireless controller.
The predictably named Shield Tablet bears a striking resemblance to the HTC One (M7) with the aluminum front-facing speaker grilles running along the screen. The LCD display is listed by the leaked slides as eight inches with a resolution of 1920×1200. That has essentially become the accepted resolution standard for a mid-sized tablet like the Nexus 7 or LG G Pad. The device is fairly light at 390 grams (0.89 pounds), which makes it seem like it won’t be entirely made of metal, as the front view might lead you to believe.
The slides also show the Shield Tablet as being compatible with the Nvidia DirectStylus technology, which was first made available in the low-cost Tegra Note tablet late last year. DirectStylus uses the processing power of Nvidia’s Tegra chip to analyze touch input and detect the difference between a finger, a fine-tip stylus, and a blunt eraser end on a stylus. The result is an easy-to-use, passive stylus input system.
As neat as the outside could be, it’s the innards of this tablet that will make it all possible. The Shield Tablet looks to be the US launch device for the Nvidia Tegra K1. Previously codenamed Logan, Tegra K1 is the first mobile chip to move to Nvidia’s desktop GPU architecture with 192 CUDA cores with support for GPU computing and DirectX 11. The CPU side of this system-on-a-chip is no slouch, either. The version of Tegra K1 in the Shield Tablet will be the 32-bit chip with four Cortex-A15 cores clocked to 2.2GHz. The 64-bit Denver processor won’t be out until the end of the year. This tablet will absolutely tear through games, but what about the controller? The original Shield was a little awkward, but having the controller buttons a permanent fixture made a lot of sense, considering it’s a gaming-centric device.
Nvidia will sell the new Shield controller as a separate $60 accessory, according to the leaked slides. The design and layout looks almost identical to the current handheld Shield’s controller. That price would be a lot for an Android Bluetooth controller no matter how nice, but this isn’t a Bluetooth controller at all. The Shield controller connects over WiFi Direct for a much more robust and responsive experience. Nvidia says the latency is only 10ms, or half that of a Bluetooth controller.
Assuming these leaked slides are legit (and they certainly seem to be), the sketchiest part is the pricing and availability. These can change right up to the announcement. Based on the materials we have, the 16GB WiFi-only Shield will be $300, which is super-competitive. A 32GB version with LTE is $100 more at $400. In addition to that $60 controller, there’s also a $40 tablet cover that morphs into a stand. The slides list a launch date of July 29th in the US, so an official announcement must be coming very soon.
