Chip maker not concerned about Nvidia’s in-house Tegra 4 benchmark results

Qualcomm and Nvidia are taking turns at dissing each other’s next-gen SoCs. In the latest round of this entertaining battle, we have Qualcomm’s Senior VP of Product Management, Raj Talluri, insisting that, despite any claims to the contrary by Nvidia, the Tegra 4 chip can’t hold a candle to its upcoming Snapdragon 800 processor.

Talluri recently told Snapdragon 800 is “easily” better than Tegra 4. Despite Nvidia’s claim that the Tegra 4 with its four Cortex-A15 CPU cores and 72-core GPU is the fastest mobile processor in the world, he not only sees the Snapdragon 800 as being more powerful, but also “so much more integrated” due to the fact that it has an on-die LTE modem. Further, he seems particularly proud of the chip’s ability to encode and decode 4K UHD (3840 pixels × 2160) video.

Talluri’s response comes a few days after Tegra 4 benchmarks released by Nvidia showed the chip to be considerably ahead of the competition, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 chipset (1.9 GHz Krait 300 quad-core CPU, Adreno 320 GPU). So what he is basically saying is that the Snapdragon 800, which packs a 2.3GHz  Krait 400 quad-core CPU and Adreno 330 GPU, will have no problem avenging its younger sibling’s humiliation at the hands of the Tegra 4, which incidentally also has a younger sibling of its own called Tegra 4i (2.3GHz quad-core CPU, 60-core GPU and on-die LTE).

In an interview given to TechPulse 360 earlier this month, Qualcomm’s CMO Anand Chandrashekhar had expressed a lot of confidence in the ability of the new Snapdragon chips. So much so that he said he believed Nvidia’s Tegra 4 was inferior to even the company’s Snapdragon 600, let alone the 800, which “completely outstrips it [Tegra 4] and puts a new benchmark in place.”

Today iFixit released its first “Tablet Repairability” list, which ranks some of the more popular tablets by ease of repairability. The majority of Apple’s tablets found themselves near the bottom of the list with a rating of 2/10.

The list was based on iFixit’s findings from their teardown work. Two of the biggest reasons for low repairability scores were excessive adhesive and a high probability of breakage during disassembly. The majority of Apple’s iPad family were guilty of one or both of those symptoms.

The lone Apple tablet with a good repairability rating was the original iPad with a 6/10, notching in below the Nexus 7 on the list. The only negative for the original was that the battery was difficult to remove or replace.

The list doesn’t include every tablet released, but it does include some of the more popular ones like the various Kindle Fire models and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The top tablet on the list was the Dell XPS 10 with a 9/10, while the Microsoft Surface Pro scored worst with a 1/10.

In the past other Apple products, like the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which received a 1/10, have also received criticism for being difficult to repair from the iFixit team.

U.S. coffee chain Dunkin’ Donuts has added Passbook support to its iPhone app, allowing users to pay for their coffee and donuts with a virtual gift card stored on their phone. Starbucks added similar support to its iPhone app back in October.

PAY RIGHT FROM THE APP WITH A VIRTUAL DD™ CARD.

Use the app to pay for all your purchases. You can either add a plastic card or purchase a virtual card via the app. Simply tap the DD Card you wish to use and present the barcode to the DD crew member to be scanned, and you’re good to go. You can also manage and reload your DD Card right from the app.

APPLE PASSBOOK INTEGRATION

Now you can purchase a virtual card via the Dunkin’ App and add it to your Passbook wallet.

Dunkin’ Donuts is a free download from the App Store. [Direct Link]

A PC is…

In between my chores as a hardware tester, I’m an IIBT board-certified troller and can successfully argue with anyone about anything, anywhere, at any time.

These days, one of the many issues I get to spar with people over is, “What is a PC?” That might seem about as basic as opining on the color blue, but the distinctions are extremely important. Just this morning, I was reading a headline stating that Apple’s new mini tablet could very well “hurt the PC market.” Of course, on the very same news site, six months ago, was a story about how analysts had deemed Apple the world’s largest “PC maker.” That’s not because Apple sold more PCs than HP, Dell, or Lenovo, but because it sold more iPads, which as we know, should be counted as PC sales, right?

That’s part of my frustration. It wasn’t so hard to figure this out in the early days of computing, before the PC wiped out pretty much everyone except for Apple. Why is it so hard today?

In the strictest definition, a PC was an IBM PC running PC-DOS on an Intel Microsoft OS, but you should be able to install any compatible OS you want. After all, a ThinkPad running Ubuntu is as much a PC as a corporate “Wintel” box. And yes, I think that x86 boxes with secure UEFIs that don’t let you install Linux or other alternative OSes fail to live up to the definition of a PC. And yes, the Mac is just an overpriced PC.

How does my litmus test work on today’s hardware? Let’s see. Is the iPad a PC? No, it’s not x86 and it’s pretty well locked down. Is it a personal computer? Yes. Is a Citrix terminal running Windows XP remotely a PC? No. Is it a personal computer? No, it’s a terminal. Is your smartphone running Android 4.1 a PC? No. Is it a personal computer? Yes. Is a Windows 8 Pro convertible tablet a PC? Yes. Is Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet running Windows RT a PC? No. Is it a personal computer? Yes. Is a Google Chromebook a PC? If it’s x86, then yes, but not when it’s running Chrome OS. Why not? Chrome OS is far closer to being a terminal than a personal computer.

During the next few years, the lines will get blurred. The media will get confused. But I’m certain that if it looks like, smells like, and boots like a PC, I’ll know it.

Gordon Mah Ung is Tecnobits’s deputy editor, senior hardware expert, and all-around muckraker.

One of the by-products of being a Tecnobitsis that you never run out of friends and family members that hit you up for advice on their next purchase. It happened yesterday, which led to some price research, which led to the uncovering of a gem online. Tecnobitsweighs the piggy bank and wonders where the hammer was last seen.

When Toshiba launched a $10,000 Quad HD 3D TV last January, we all felt that the new generation of cool stuff was imminent.

The actual specification of Quad HD seems to vary faster than a dubstep beat, but it is essentially 4,000 by 2,000 – giving you 8 million dots – so around 4x the number you get with a 1920×1080 resolution picture – hence Quad HD.

We did a scan for the latest kind of price you might pay for a Quad HD 3D TV from a reputable manufacturer and came across the Toshiba 55ZL2B.

Over on John Lewis, it weighs in at £4,999 with positive customer reviews etc. Which is all well and good. But a deeper search revealed a very different price from some other online retailers like 123AV.

Who?   We hear you ask. No – we hadn’t heard of them either, but over 100 reviews on Trust Pilot say that they have a 9.4 out of 10 rating, so we know that they do actually exist.

They exist enough to be offering the same Toshiba 55ZL2B for just £2,995.

In addition to being a 55″ Quad HD product, this TV offers glasses-free 3D with an intelligent face-tracking system that adjusts the image so that everyone gets a more realistic experience.

At £7,000 it's expensive. By £5,000 it's getting interesting. With 123 AV offering it at £2,995, it's about to becomes a whole lot more affordable. By Xmas, who knows? Buying a TV now is a dangerous occupation. Buyer's remorse is waiting by the ton.

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