One of the biggest issues with the
development with Android phones, or any
tech for that matter, is by the time you have the best
device on the market it is already out of date and ready for an
update!
Nvidia's
Tegra 4i has the potential to ease some of that though!
The Nvidia
Tegra 4 quad-core processor is the current generation Nvidia chip and one we are going to see in a lot of next generation phones from the likes of
ZTE and possibly Nubia and even smaller Chinese vendors. The
Tegra 4i is the
LTE verson of that chip, has been successfully
updated to
CAT 4
LTE via
software tweaks!
LTE is currently available in different categories (CAT) the Tegra 4i, shown of at MWC this year ran on CAT 3 which is capable of 100mbps download and 50mbps upload speeds. Normally what would happen is a SoC maker would release an all new chip when manufacturers want to update to the faster CAT, however Nvidia have done this through software instead!
What this means is that an
Tegra 4i phone running on
CAT 3 is capable of being
updated to the faster
CAT 4 (when it becomes more mainstream). While a great step and one which customers are going to be thrilled about it still remains to be seen if phone manufacturers will provide the
updates or force customers to buy newer hardware.