NVIDIA Launching Supercharged Shield Tablet With Tegra X1 By End Of Q1

Given the overall success of its first SHIELD products, it's seemed obvious that NVIDIA would keep on trucking, and would soon infuse one of its products with some Tegra X1 lovin'. But just how soon? A lot sooner than I would have figured, if Fudzilla's reporting proves true.

The site says that NVIDIA's planning to launch a brand-new SHIELD Tablet by the end of Q1. As NVIDIA's annual developer conference takes place in mid-March, it's estimated that it could launch there. That would strike me as a bit of an odd venue to release a gaming device, but if it does prove true, it'd surely mean that there are some new features on the tablet that cater to developers.

Another thing that strikes me is the sheer speed of this rollout, if NVIDIA is in fact planning to release any X1-equipped product over the next couple of months. Typically, the first products to feature NVIDIA's latest Tegra processors don't show face for about six months, and even then, the products might not be available in the US.

It could be, though, that NVIDIA is simply wanting to be more aggressive in the mobile marketplace. We first saw proof of this in November, when the company was one of the first to rollout Android 5.0 'Lollipop', to its SHIELD Tablet, mere weeks after the OS launch date.

The current SHIELD Tablet still deserves to be called a powerhouse, but once the Tegra X1 model comes out, it'll be hard to look at it the same way. NVIDIA's Tegra X1 becomes the first mobile chip to breach the 1 TFLOPs barrier, and as it's built on the company's new Maxwell architecture, it has a lot of potential.

With all we know about Tegra X1, should NVIDIA in fact release a SHIELD Tablet that utilizes it over the next couple of months, NVIDIA will in all likeliness be able to lay claim to selling the fastest mobile device on the planet.