Nvidia and LG Unveil Optimus 2X Superphone – Show Off Console Quality Multiplayer Gaming on Android

RipTen: Today at CES, Nvidia and LG unveiled what they are touting as a true “super-phone” and it’s looking pretty damn super indeed.

Powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip – this phone is lightning fast – and is set to finally provide Android users with a truly world class gaming experience.

[CrzyFooL]

It's about damn time - now all they need are developers to make games for it!

[GWAVE]

I think CES this year is gonna be "year of the smartphones".

iPhone proved that gamers like it. Other phones will follow suit with their own hardcore games.

[Sarcasm]

Not just smartphones, but tablets.

And tablets that kicks the iPad's ass I might add.

[ProjectVulcan]

This phone will deliver great performance but at the cost of being battery crushing. When the reviews come in the thing they will be talking about after praising how fast it is will be how terrible the battery life is.

I'll put money down on it. Tegra 2 is fast but it will come at a price until they manage an optical shrink

[WhittO]

^^ I think tablets and smartphones will begin to merge over the next couple of years, especially since many tablets come with data contracts with Network providers and some already have phone functionality anyway.

I think they will just be in like different sizes but have the same specs etc, since we already have dual-core processors in a smartphone, I doubt fitting the tech into a smaller device is a problem.

I can't wait until 5 years time, everything will be digital and like something off a science fiction film haha, it already kind of is! Walking around with touch devices that are connected to everything, maps & GPS, internet, email, watching movies on the go etc.
I always think imagine if you took someone from 10 years ago and showed them an ipad or an Android and showed what they could do, you would think it was unrealistic and wouldnt happen until far into the future lol.

[RageAgainstTheMShine]

PS3 & Nvidia FTW!

[joydestroy]

Optimus 2X isn't coming to the states, though, not by that name anyway.

pretty sure the LG Revolution is the American version of the same phone that's going to Verizon.

i can't wait for more dual core phones to drop.

[CrzyFooL]

Nvidia says this is the US version.

[King-Leonidas]

damn i might get it lol

[Ju]

"now all they need are developers to make games"

BTW, I just got NFS:Shift for my GalaxyS the other day - for $1. EA is porting games to Android. More will follow.

[jaredhart]

Console Quality - Wowsers!

[multipayer]

It has FOUR gigantic buttons, and a TOUCH ANALOG STICK obstructing the picture. Console quality for sureeeee...

[NYC_Gamer]

now this phone is real damn cool :)

[Pedantic91]

Xperia Play rival ?

[TheIneffableBob]

If the current Xperia Play rumors are true, then its single-core 2nd gen Snapdragon will be slower than the dual-core Tegra 2 in the LG Optimus 2X. That would be a bit disappointing, but the software (and hardware controls!) will prove whether or not the Xperia Play will be worth having.

[jack_burt0n]

How do you compete with the psp back catalog, psn, and hardware controls?

Nobody has released footage of the device running yet so bit soon to complain about its hardware merits.

[RememberThe357]

http://www.engadget.com/201...

It does not run very well.

[silvacrest]

that does not prove much, lets wait and see shall we?

[Theonik]

Except it will not play PSP games.

[Hitman0769]

death to smartphones, life to super phones!!!

[plb]

Android is the future

[Bloodyghost]

I have to see it running to declare it a buy but I wont be too surprised if it is. Phones are getting closer to console boundaries (see Iphone 4 for point) and its about time we start getting a new lineup of effing insane graphically advanced consoles.

For I rather not watch a phone kick my consoles arses.

[smoothdude]

That is why everyone needs a gaming PC, you can always update the components. :)

[KillingAllFanboys]

wow now I have to wait now til summer to get a new phone gosh I love and hate new phones because now I got to pick between Android, Iphone or Window Phone 0_0 so many phones coming out!!

[jaredhart]

Agreed.

[Raendom]

What game are they playing? One of them is using move. It looks MMOish too! :O

[RememberThe357]

"Dungeon Defenders"

I've never heard of it.

And the Android version didn't look like the PS3/PC version being played. I'd like to see some screen shots to back up this bold claim. Right now I'm not buying it.

[Dac2u]

Here's a video of the game being played, it starts at around 2:30.

http://www.slashgear.com/lg...

This phone looks pretty awesome.

[NeutralGamer]

Dungeon Defenders

its made with the Unreal Engine!

[RememberThe357]

The biggest problem with playing these games on the go is battery life. If you only get an our of play time then it's kind of pointless.

[Stealth20k]

sorry graphics dont equal good games and its not even close to the consoles honestly

I would rather have the 3ds and psp2............ because the 3ds launch lineup will provide better gaming experiences than this ever could

[divideby0]

^ this is a phone.... gaming is just an added bonus...

[hassi94]

Well if you get a similar phone that does everything else this does but game you could save yourself at least £200. Nice bonus, £200 price point on that bonus...

[nycredude]

Why even bother then. The contols suck, and teh battery life sucks. I try gaming on my G2 and other than old nintendo rpgs the controls are terrible.

[divideby0]

sounds like a beast...
playing online games vs a PS3....pretty sweet

and yea, battery life when you are running this chip all out will be interesting

[HeartDisease]

"all three of these players are in the same game"

yeah and only 2 of them have a good gaming experience thanks to controllers.

they can make these super tiny phones that can run the software, but what about an analog stick? or buttons large enough i dont hit multiple ones with my thumb? or how about buttons that are NOT on the damn touch screen? do 90% of the people buying these phones ever even come close to touching the power of them playing angry birds?

its irony. people do not want to carry around gaming devices like DS or psp cause they are to big and geeky to game on but instead want their super small phones that lack game controls to play games on.

[karl]

thats awesome.. my old xpheria just broke .. i was gonna buy an HTC in a few months but i guess ill wait to get a bit more info on this awesome cellphone

[OC_MurphysLaw]

I am all for phones getting good games...but I keep seeing this "console quality" or "console comparable" games for phones...and to that I say..."I don't think so Tim". The may look great, play smooth, etc... but they will never truly be comparable to larger HD console games.

[Zikron]

The issue they are going to face is getting developers on board. The problem the developers are going to run into is that yea they can release a great looking game to the Android store which serves millions but what percentage of that is going to have this device or a device powerful enough to handle it?

That's the problem these app stores are facing is that there are device limitations. So while people want games to look like what is showed here, games like Angry Birds are going to generate more money because they don't have the same hardware requirements. Apple did a great job at controlling this for awhile, but then they release the iPad, and now you see a lot of apps not running well on first and second generation devices.

It's like PC gaming, my gaming platform of choice but look at the sales figured for Black Ops, the consoles are DESTROYING the PC despite the PC offering superior graphics and controls because you buy a box and insert a disc, no worrying about hardware specs and constantly upgrading your machine.

If you want "console quality" games on a mobile phone I think the edge will always go to the last player in the game because they aren't tied down by older devices. Which currently is Microsoft with the Windows 7 phones which can play Xbox Live Arcade games.

[theEx1Le]

Give that thing a slide out qwerty key pad and i'm sold :)

[bfenty]

I want one. Where do I sign?

[jay2]

Um, this or PS phone, we'll have to wait and see.

[LMS]

iphone already has a few games that look better than 75% of console games, the consoles are Dinosaurs, time to move on, 720p is soooo old, 1997 old.

[gypsygib]

I wish 100% of my 360 and PS3 games were 720p.

[N4OGs]

If you want gaming to get epic you will do as I say and stop being a chump.

[gypsygib]

Music:

"It's the end of computers and consoles as we know it"
"It's the end of computers and consoles as we know it"
"I feel fiiinnnne"

[Trroy]

Where are the buttons?

That's one of my prereq's for being a serious gaming device these days. I despise touchscreen "sticks" and touchscreen buttons that take up half the screen.

[xtremegamerage]

Uncharted 3, PS3 & Android.

Mp gaming:) Now that would be nice.

[joeorc]

todays smartphone's have very powerful processor's and this Processor in this phone will be quite robust..but even the 2dn generation snapdragon's perform 3D acceleration as well as some much newer phones!

just to put this in perspective:

the new windows phone 7 that has been released:

which has in it the Adreno 200 which put it identical to the AMD Imageon z430

http://www.engadget.com/201...

and which:

Unlike the Zune and Courier prototype, which are both powered by NVIDIA's Tegra, most Windows Phone 7 Series phones will use a Qualcomm SnapDragon chipset that contains a GPU from NVIDIA-rival AMD. The GPU, the AMD Z430, features a unified pixel & vertex shader pipeline (based on the Xbox 360 Xenos GPU).

Unfortunately, developers won't be able to use the GPU's shaders in 3D game titles at launch. However, an update to Direct 3D Mobile will provide this functionality sometime late this year or early next year. Describes Microsoft's Shawn Hargreaves in a blog, "

http://www.dailytech.com/Wi...

an yet this GPU is older than the one from this prototype

windows 7 phones :

QSD8650 with an Adreno 200

PspPhone Prototype:

MSM8255 with an Adreno 205

In a neutral gaming benchmark like the Quake III Arena demo, we can really get a feel for how fast Adreno 205 is. And though nothing on the market can touch the SGX 540, the Adreno 205 basically runs rings around the Adreno 200 in the EVO and Nexus One and even outpaces the SGX 530 in the Droid 2 and Droid X. So while the Adreno 205 isn’t world beating, it brings about a huge change by making the the 2nd generation Snapdragon SoC competitive as far as GPU performance goes. Qualcomm no longer comes with a GPU performance tradeoff.

http://www.anandtech.com/sh...

[PirateThom]

Playing games on a phone is completely counterproductive until they find a way to make multitouch and pressure sensitive controls possible as well make it so your fingers aren't covering half the screen.

[Garnett]

Have fun trying to sell anything on android...

[SuperStrokey1123]

why is that?

[hoops]

You do know Garnett that Android OS for Phones will soon outsell IOS and every other OS for that matter? Marketshare = sales and Android will soon have the most marketshare.

[Garnett]

@Superstroker1123

Everyone knows people dont buy stuff on Android.

@hoops

Well yeah of course it will outsell iOS cause its on every effing phone, that is a bad thing, why? Because developers dont have fixed specs like the iphone, so they cannot really use the hardware.

But i think android is just as good as iOS but iOS has better apps/games.

[SuperStrokey1123]

Thats just awesome! Ive been waiting for stuff like this to happen. This literally is the begining of games second golden age where mobile really really comes into its own and consoles and it merge to share an experience.

Great stuff!

[Bolts]

This must be a mistake, if this phone has 8GB of RAM it would have 16 times more memory than the PS3 and twice as much memory as the typical PC desktop.

To put things in perspective both the PS3 and the iPhone 4 has 512K of RAM.

[SuperStrokey1123]

Obviously you dont know what you are talking about at all, it has 8 gigs of MEMORY, ram is different.

[Bolts]

Obviously I don't because the article clearly states 8 gigs of memory storage. How much RAM does it have because the specs are so impressive, if it features 1 gigs of RAM that would really round out the feature list. The iphone 4 does fine with 512K but 1 gigs would totally be nerdgasism.