Xiaomi Targets iPad Mini With Mi Pad - Tegra K1 Inside

Xiaomi has announced their Mi Pad Android tablet for $240 USD (16 GB model) and $270 USD (64 GB model).

Specifications:

• 7.9" 2048 x 1536 display (made by Sharp / AUO)
• NVIDIA Tegra K1 (32-bit)
• MIUI Android
• 2 GB RAM
• 16 GB or 64 GB eMMC 5.0
• microSD up to 128 GB
• Front 5 MP camera
• Rear 8 MP camera
• WiFi 802.11ac / BT 4.0
• 6,700 mAh battery
• 360 g
• 202.1 x 135.4 x 8.5 mm

The device will have a beta test program in early June (China only) with a full release to follow.

Xiaomi also announced an Android TV that uses a 49" 4K panel (made by LG) for $640.

If you can't beat them, copy them.

And then beat them with the copy.

This "copy" tablet offers 2x the performance of the iPad Mini Retina and is constructed with high end components. The Mi Pad is using Tegra K1 which has a vast API support, such as full OpenGL 4.4, and other features found inside a Kepler based GPU. This allows game developers to easily port any title that would qualify to run on a Steambox to Tegra K1.

In the Chinese market the iPad Mini Retina 16 GB is 2,888 RMB ($463 USD), the Mi Pad 16 GB is 1,599 RMB ($240 USD). The iPad Mini Retina 64 GB is 4,288 RMB ($688 USD) and the Mi Pad 64 GB is 1,799 RMB ($288 USD).The Mi Pad can still add up to an additional 128 GB in the form of a microSD.

Story of Apple.

Heh, maybe in your wildest dreams. A notion upheld by the most cantankerous, angry neckbeards in the land. ;)

I'd hope it's better equipped than the already-available iPad Mini. But I won't bow to the alter of specs like many, lazier folks will. It's about much more than hardware specifications.

Once all the potential becomes realized, it'll be worth considering seriously. As for now, it's just more catch-up. How boring.

Have they ever actually invented and marketed something successfully?

Are you serious? That question is really, way out there.

Alright then.

Recently?

The iPhone and iPad aren't recent enough? They only completely changed the technological landscape both times. Completely.

Thing is,tablets existed few years before the iPad and same goes for the iPhone(beside the multi-touch interface,hello PDAs).

Just tough it was funny considering that Apple usually take existing devices\technology,slap their logo on it and call it a day(plus some marketing)

Anyone with any understanding of history will disagree with you.

Poo-pooing something as revolutionary as the implementation of (the Apple-aquired) Fingerworks multi-touch tech (which isn't even on the same level as Apple's data detectors -- that got Samsung into major hot water to the tune of hundreds of millions) is really evidence of how little you know. This is why I ask questions. Your opinions don't hold any value if they aren't based in reality.

I don't care about what you think if you don't know what you're talking about.

Actually, it's equipped to take on the unreleased 2014 iPad Mini. Tegra K1 is not just a more powerful SoC, it has a serious affect on mobile gaming and development.

This is NVIDIA playing catch-up to their own desktop grade GPU's, not catch-up to mobile GPU's that prioritizes on lesser API's such as OpenGL ES 3.0.

Of course there is also the price, which you can't easily ignore, it's hovering around half of the cost of the iPad Mini.

A serious affect on mobile gaming and development how? Because it has more powerful hardware? It's not about the bleeding edge specs, it's about proper balance and a sticky ecosystem. That tablet won't have those advantages. This tablet will have more of an effect on android tablet makers and exactly none on Apple. The attitude people have about the phone and tablet market, the idea that this is going to seriously affect anything, is archaic. It's the reason Samsung ships twice as many phones as Apple, but nets half as much profit as Apple.

When the potential is realized in a meaningful way, I'll start to care. We're a long, long ways off.

I don't know how many times I have to say this. This device can support OpenGL 4.4 and DirectX 12. This is the same architecture as a desktop Kepler GPU.

The development of games is no longer restricted by mobile API's or architecture, it is now the same as developing for a PC.

Yes. We were even more amazed than you are. That's the first version of SS3 for Android. And it would not have been possible without this Tegra miracle. :) This chip looks like something that will knock everyone's socks off. We couldn't believe how good it is. It supports full OpenGL4, and we practically directly ported the entire PC game to it, along with PC content. It was not cut down like e.g. for Xbox 360.

As an additional point, when we compiled the code without errors and ironed the glitches in initialization code, as soon as it started the graphics correctly for the first time, it went right through the intro sequence, and into the game. Without any noticeable visual errors. I think I can safely say this is the first time ever. Normally, we'd have a few weeks of unexplainable black screens, inverted colors, garbage in textures, broken shaders, etc, until it looks ok visually. With K1, this just worked.

This is the breaking point where we can finally start shipping same games on both PC and in the "mobile space" (including microconsoles, future TVs, etc).

Credit Alen L developer for Croteam

Great. And when that potential is realized in a meaningful way, I'll care a whole lot more.

Right now, we just have a new lowest common denominator. Let's wait and see if enough developers are going to care.

Epic (Unreal Engine 4 on Tegra K1), Valve (Portal and Half Life 2 on NVIDIA Shield/Tegra 4), the current developers for Tegra and other game developers seem to care.

You're talking about this attribute as being some sort of massive inconvenience for developers, in such a way they won't care to port their PC or console games.

Any games that are prepped for Steam OS are very easy to port over to Android. Once you make the move to OpenGL, the rest is allegedly fairly simple. The Serious Sam 3 port apparently took a matter of a couple of weeks to get ported over, with the bulk of the effort going into mapping controls to an Android environment.

Credit Anandtech

You're inferring that I'm making it sound like a huge inconvenience. I never said it was an inconvenience. What I do know is that Nvidia's Shield made exactly zero waves in the industry. I'm not compelled to believe there's an amazing future because of UE4 compatibility (which it shares with literally everything else in the universe), and a workable version of an ancient game (Half-Life 2) and Portal, and the vague "other game developers."

When that potential is realized in a meaningful way, I'll care. Right now, it's just potential that hasn't shown a track record for meaningful success.

I'm aware you never said that, and I know I'm inferring that, but it's based off of your consistent negative responses. You seem to heavily doubt the success of this SoC for the wrong reasons. NVIDIA's Shield was not using the same architecture as a desktop Kepler GPU.

Which other mobile device currently supports the complete version of Unreal Engine 4? The answer is none. No other SoC offers OpenGL 4.4 and DirectX 12 support.

Half Life 2 and Portal came out for the NVIDIA Shield (Tegra 4). That actually took a bit of effort as Tegra 4 is nothing like Tegra K1. Like I said before, ANY SteamOS capable title can be easily ported over to Tegra K1 (for that matter, Tegra K1 might even be able to power a SteamOS device).

As for the "other game developers", I'm referring to the smaller bunch such as Croteam and Frozenbyte.

When it comes to game development, there is also the issue of drivers, something that is a non-issue for NVIDIA and their Kepler GPUs.

Well, hard to say by the specs. For PVR, I saw that unit's demo at the GDC, and I was not impressed. A room with a few objects and some shadows and fur shader may seem impressive, but it's just a tech demo. But to run an FPS game you need a lot of above-baseline features (tons of extensions), a rock solid driver (that won't falter when you actually try to use all the spec-defined corner-cases), and ability to run a lot of separate objects with a lot of different rendering states quickly. In my experience, these things tend to fall apart fairly quickly. We have a lot of problems with that on even desktop things like all OSX systems, and even some Windows systems with Intel GPUs. That's all large part driver-caused. I'm scared to even think what awaits on some of the GLES implementations. (K1 runs full OpenGL4, for starters, though we can run with GLES2/3 with somewhat limited features.)

Credit Alen L developer for Croteam

I have said this a million times now.

When all that potential is realized in a meaningful way, I'll care. As of this moment, it's nothing but a lot of talk and has affected the lives of about zero consumers. I do not expect any of this to be a meaningful success.

However, I love surprises, and it's been a really, really long time since I've been surprised in this area. Maybe we'll get one here, but probably not. I'll gladly eat my words, because that's not something I've had to do in a very long time and I do genuinely enjoy being surprised.

Bonus wisdom:

The fight for the bottom of the market is bloody and only ends one way -- a fate Motorola, HTC, Sony, and other android handset makers have learned the hard way. And it's a lesson Samsung is going to learn. When you (Samsung) out-ship your main competitor (Apple) 2 to 1, but only earn half the profits of that same competitor -- you're in for a bad time.

One day this is all going to sink in.