[Double Rumor] Next iPhone to use NVIDIA Tegra?

Robert Hallock 5 Feb, 2009 at 12:07pm ET Article published in Tech

Comments

1. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:24pm Garg That'd be hot, but I'll believe it when I see it.
2. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 1:31pm Thrax That's basically my opinion on the matter as well.
3. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 4:40pm chrisWhite Awesome, because my battery dies fast enough as it is without pumping the power through an NVIDIA GPU. Okay, that's unfounded, I know nothing about the Tegra, it just sounds like a very good and very bad idea.
4. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 5:14pm Snarkasm ^ Thank you.
   
   This could be an amazing platform... if they used a 2-lb battery to keep it running and gaming all day. Somehow I doubt it.
5. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 5:22pm Thrax The ARM chip in the iPhone 3G is a 2W part. The Tegra APX 2500 is a 0.6-1w part, and the Tegra 600 is a 1.5-2W part. Either way, it'll probably use less power than today's mobile CPUs, be they ARM, Freescale or x86.
6. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 5:28pm Snarkasm It was less a statement on Tegra's power requirements and more a statement on the iPhone's current power situation. If they leave form factors essentially the same and plug what's essentially a media and graphics chip in, people will want to watch more media and play more games on their phone. My previous experience with an iPhone (friends, etc) showed me it can't game for more than 2 hours without draining the battery entirely.
   
   For what's purporting to be a gaming platform right now, it sure can't stack up to competing mobile game devices, and while sticking a better chip in it may make it perform better in the graphics space, it can't make it perform enough better in the daily longevity to truly make it a portable gaming platform and a phone in its current incarnation.
7. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 5:51pm Thrax NVIDIA is promising 10 hours of continous 1080p playback on the Tegra. We'll see, of course, but even a 25%-50% reduction in power consumption equates to a 15-35% increase in battery life in the same factor.
8. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 5:55pm Snarkasm That could be exciting. Let us see what the future brings.
9. 
   5 Feb 2009 ~ 6:10pm chrisWhite Speaking as a hard-core iPhone user I use my iPhone for gaming a lot, usually with iTunes playing something in the background. For me, I have my power cable with me pretty much wherever I go and I plug into my car, my laptop and the wall all the time. Just part of living with the device for me so I was being pretty flippant with my remark above. Would I love a better battery? Heck yeah, but I'm okay with it how it is now.
   
   I got it right before SIGGRAPH last year and I was using it a ton getting around LA and on the show floor and I actually resorted to using my MacBook as an external battery, had the cord running out of my bag and into the iPhone. Nerdy, but it worked.
10. 
    5 Feb 2009 ~ 9:39pm Garg

    chrisWhite wrote:

    I actually resorted to using my MacBook as an external battery, had the cord running out of my bag and into the iPhone. Nerdy, but it worked.

    
    I'd love to see MacBooks marketed this way.
11. 
    5 Feb 2009 ~ 10:31pm mas0n It's OK, if it eats lots of battery power some third-party could come along and make a cheap extended-life battery that the user could inst.... OH WAIT.