It's been about six months since we got our first look at NVIDIA's quad-core test platform -- codenamed "Kal-El" -- and it pretty much floored us. The initial window for seeing any sort of Kal-El device at the time was said to be August. But initial time frames are just that -- initial.
NVIDIA now tells us the following:
“Project Kal-El-powered tablets are coming this Fall, and phones around the CES 2012 timeframe.”
You read that right. We'll see quad-core phones about a year after first seeing dual-core phones and tablets. Now that doesn't mean you'll be buying a quad-core phone come CES (which is scheduled for Jan. 10-13), but figure if they're announced then, we could see them in the spring or early summer.
One other thing of note: While people have been throwing around the Tegra 3 name for the next-gen platform (NVIDIA's dual-core platform is Tegra 2), Kal-El is still just a code name, and Tegra 3's not official. Just sayin'.
Regardless, as powerful as 2011 has been, 2012's going to be even more so. Hit the break for our hands-on with Kal-El from Mobile World Congress.
