NVIDIA Tegra Tab Leaked: 7-Inch Stylus-Toting SHIELD Companion
This week the folks at NVIDIA appear to either have had a leak in press photos or have a big enough fan out there that they've made their own Tegra-themed tablet. What we're seeing here is an NVIDIA Tegra Tab, a 7-inch tablet that very well may be the tablet version of what we've been working with in NVIDIA SHIELD. This tablet first appeared on MyDrivers, very much appearing to take on more than just the NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor power of the gaming portable – this device is ready to get rugged.
This tablet is tipped to work with a 5-megapixel back-facing camera and a variety of ports including micro-HDMI, micro-USB, standard 3.5-mm audio jack, and a power button, the lot of them appearing on the left side of the tablet near the top. Along the top there are two more markings, one of which is likely a volume rocker, the other either a microSIM card slot or a microSD card slot.
Another possibility is that this smaller mark is the power button while the top bit on the right side (screen facing forward, of course), is a slot for a SIM of some sort or another. Given NVIDIA's willingness to work with microSD cards, we're banking on there being said room for storage expansion as much more likely than early inclusion of a slot for a SIM.
As we've seen earlier this year, Tegra 4 works with pressure-sensitive stylus technology. As you may be able to see in the top back of this Tegra Tab, there's a slot for a pen. It's quite likely that a capacitive stylus will be included with this machine at launch.
Note also that the tablet NVIDIA used for that stylus demonstration was a developer unit, but could very well have been the prototype for what we're seeing here in the similarly-sized Tegra Tab.
This tablet will very likely follow in the footsteps of NVIDIA SHIELD, that including a near-stock iteration of Android up front and developer support and encouragement at all angles. This device will also quite likely work with PC gaming streaming as SHIELD does – and by the time it's launched, said functionality will probably be well out of beta.
Judging by the switch-up of processor manufacturers in the Nexus 7 with the 2013 reboot, it would appear that NVIDIA jumped at the opportunity to continue the success of the Tegra-in-7-inch-tabet form one-two punch with their own hardware. Now we've only to see how SHIELD's market performance acts upon the eventual release of this Tegra Tab device.