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with Android phones, or any tech for that matter, is by the time you have the best device on the market it is already out of date and ready for an update!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!
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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.
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At the speed they are doing the infrastructure upgrades I doubt we will miss LTE capable phone this year and even the next…