NVIDIA has announced that ZTE will be one of the first device makers to release a phone powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 4 chip. The Chinese company is expected to launch its upcoming phone in the first half of 2013.
The Tegra 4 processor features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and 72 graphics cores, along with an Icera i500 LTE modem, making it one of the first Tegra chips to feature built-in support for 4G LTE networks.
NVIDIA also recently unveiled the Tegra 4i chip, which is a less powerful (and cheaper) processor that also features LTE support.
While ZTE is best known in its home country of China, the company has been making a play for the US market in recent years and it’s possible we could see this Tegra 4 phone in the States sometime after it launches in China. And while ZTE is the first company to announce plans for a Tegra 4 phone, it might not be the last.
But NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 processor is hardly the only next-gen chip to choose from. When HTC chose a processor for the new HTC One smartphone, the company went with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU. And it’s likely that Samsung’s Galaxy S IV phone will be powered by a next-generation Samsung Exynos processor.