Back in 2013, graphics chip maker Nvidia released one of the more unique Android tablets to make it to market, the Nvidia Shield Portable.
The tablet, taking a cue from past gaming portables like the Nintendo 3DS, featured a unique clamshell design that joined its Xbox-like controller and 5-inch display together. It also included Nvidia’s own Tegra 4 chipset, making it one of the more powerful Android tablets available on the market at the time, and the ability to stream PC games if the user had a PC equipped with one of the company’s GeForce series GPUs.
Nvidia has since gone on to iterate on Shield idea with products like the Shield Tablet and Shield TV, but the company has yet to release a proper follow-up to the Shield Portable, at least not one consumers can buy at their local retail store.
Over the weekend, one Canadian Reddit user, FwrigginRwootbeer, found what is appears to be an unreleased Shield Portable 2 kit unit at a local pawn shop in his city. Rwootbeer says he picked up the unit unware that Nvidia had not yet released a proper follow up to the Shield Portable 2. It’s likely the unreleased device was a developer kit, which helps explain how it found its way to a pawn shop.
After putting the tablet through a benchmarking tool on the suggestion of the Android subreddit, Rwootbeer reported back that the unit features an ARM Cortex-A57 processor clocked at 1.91 GHz (making it likely a Tegra X1 chip), 3GB of RAM and a 1440 x 810 pixel display. Those specifications match up with a FCC listing Android Police dug up at the start of the year.
At this point, it’s unlikely Nvidia will ever release the Shield 2. Still, it’s interesting to see what the company was working on before it nixed the idea.
Source: Reddit 1, 2 Via Android Police
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