I saw several quad-core tablets at the Consumer Electronics show, but no smartphones. Luckily, Sascha Pallenberg, my friend who runs the Netbook News site, captured video of a Fujitsu handset running on the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. From the looks of it, this phone’s performance will rival that of the Asus Transformer Prime tablet.
Fujitsu doesn’t target the U.S. market, so I don’t expect to see this Android 4.0 smartphone for sale here. However, Sascha’s video gives us an idea of what to expect from the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona next month: console quality games on a large screen piped from a smartphone and played with using a wireless controller. Although this demo uses a wired HDTV connection, I anticipate we’ll see more wireless video solutions introduced this year.
I’m still holding to the idea that throwing hardware alone at Android’s problem won’t solve any issues. However, I’ve used Android 4.0 for the past 6 weeks. The user interface improvements in Google’s platform, along with more powerful hardware, will allow Android to better contend against Apple’s iOS system.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of quad-core handsets shown off, with a few available in the first half of 2012. By mid year, we’ll start to see a larger number of these powerful handsets hit the market. Samsung, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and others will also be touting quad-core chips. But if my mobile predictions for 2012 hold true, far more dual-core handsets will be sold this year.
Then again, Apple is rumored to include its own quad-core chip in the next iPad and would be likely to use the same in a future iPhone design. That means 2012 will be more exciting to watch than 2011 when it comes to tablets and smartphones from a consumer perspective: Two great mobile choices in combination with what I think will be a third up-and-comer in Windows Phone handsetsand possibly in Windows 8 tablets.
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