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Nvidia’s profit margins have hit a record high, thanks to growth in its high-end GPU and GPGPU products helping to shore up a slowdown in Tegra business.

Nvidia has bucked the current PC market slowdown, posting boosted profits compared to the same time last year thanks to strong sales of its high-end Kepler-based GPU products.

According to the company’s quarterly filing report, the company made an impressive $954.7 million in the first quarter of its financial year 2014 – and while that’s down a disappointing 13.7 per cent compared to the last quarter of FY13, when the company took in a whopping $1.11 billion, it represents a 3.2 per cent gain on the same period last year. With other PC-related companies complaining of slowing sales and tight margins, that’s not too shabby at all – and comes at the very top of the company’s previous projections.

‘Our results this quarter came in at the upper end of our guidance, driven by strong sales of higher-end GPU products for PC gaming,‘ explained Nvidia’s Rob Csongor, vice president of investor relations, during the company’s conference call late last night. ‘We made good progress on our key strategies as the Kepler GPU architecture, which delivers outstanding performance and energy efficiency drove strong GeForce demand with PC gamers and began to flow through our Quadro and Tesla businesses in new products.‘

Keplar on the rise
Increased uptake of high-priced Kepler boards, especially in the workstation market, have seen the company’s margins rise to a record 54 per cent – 1.4 points up on the last quarter, and 4.2 per cent year-on-year. ‘There are always puts and takes but this improvement reflects our richer mix of higher margin products as well as the underlying value of our GPUs in the marketplace and our focus on cost,‘ claimed Burns. ‘For Q2, we expect margins to remain within the same 54% range as Q1 with a high mix of our higher margin products.‘

Another major win for the company has been uptake of GeForce Grid, the company’s GPU-powered cloud computing platform, and its closely-aligned workstation-centric Grid Visual Computing Appliance (VCA). ‘In the short time since we began taking Grid to market this quarter, we’ve engaged over 100 Grid VGX and Grid VCA trial customers and signed many of the top Adobe, Autodesk and SolidWorks resellers to take Grid VCA to market,‘ claimed Csongor. ‘We believe Grid VCA represent a potential $3 billion market opportunity.‘

Discussing the slowing PC market and growth of tablets, Nvidia’s co-founder, chief executive and president Jen-Hsun Huang was bullish on his company’s future in the discrete GPU market. ‘ People who build high-end gaming PCs, and people who are enthusiasts, and who enjoy having the most performance on the desktop, or people who are building these PCs for their own video editing hobbies, or the maker people who are designing 3D objects and then printing it at home, they print their own jewellery, they print their own, I don’t know what, telephones: they need to be designing 3D somehow, and those PCs tend to have GPUs inside,‘ explained Huang. ‘And that’s a movement that’s really growing fast. So, I would say that desktop PC market that we target, that we serve, is quite a vibrant market.‘

An admission from Huang of just how high the margins on his company’s enterprise-grade products are – the Grid family and the Tesla GPGPU accelerator boards – provides a glimpse as to the headline-grabbing 54 per cent profit margin: ‘Grid and Tesla are much higher than 54 per cent,‘ Huang explained, ‘[while] Tegra is lower than 54 per cent. Whenever our gaming business improves, it helps gross margins. Whenever GTX improves, it helps gross margins. When Tesla grows, it helps gross margins. Notebooks obviously drag the gross margins down, because they tend to be a more competitive business. Low-end desktop PC business tends to drag gross margins, but that’s not a very large business [for Nvidia] anyhow.‘

‘You know, the PC market declined 10 per cent quarter-over-quarter, but we declined only 6 per cent quarter-over-quarter,’‘ added Csongor. ‘That difference comes from growth in the non-commodity PC space. Non-commodity PC space will tend to be Tesla and Quadro and GTX, and those growths are always good for us and that helps gross margins. That’s also where we are putting most of our energy. Most of our energy related to GPGPU, related to extending our GPU beyond the PC into our datacentres and servers all the work that has led to the announcement of Cisco, and IBM, and Dell and HP launching their GPU servers, all of that kind of growth is good and I think we are just gearing up for Grid becoming a larger and larger component of our business – and that’s good for our margins.‘

Tough time for Tegra
But what of Tegra, the company’s ARM-powered system-on-chip product? Back in November, the company claimed that a large proportion of its growth was coming from non-PC products, meaning Tegra and its related chipsets. Well, things appear to be slowing down a little on that front – the company has reported a 50.5 per cent dip in revenue sequentially, and 22.2 per cent year-on-year – likely as a result of increased competition from the like of Qualcomm’s popular Snapdragon family and as the market waits for the first Tegra 4 products to hit shop shelves – due, Csongor claimed, during the next financial quarter.

‘Sales volume of Tegra 3 processors declined as customers began to ramp down production of Tegra 3 base mark phones and tablets,‘ admitted Karen Burns, the company’s interim chief financial officer and vice president, during the call. ‘We expect this to continue in to the next quarter as customers start to announce Tegra 4 design with further new designs and phone ramp starting in the second half of the year.‘

Beyond a commitment to launch Tegra 4 into the market – or at least have some of its customers announce devices powered by the chip, and its Tegra 4i LTE-modem integrated variant – by the end of the next quarter, Nvidia was silent on impending product launches, except to say that it expects an uptick in sales when Intel launches its Haswell processor family at Computex in June.

For those who like full figures: the company’s Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) revenue for the quarter was $954.7 million on a gross margin of 54.3 per cent. With operating expenses for the quarter totalling $435.8 million, that makes for a total net profit for the quarter of $77.9 million – or $0.13 per share. Investors appear to have taken the news cautiously: despite hitting the top end of its projections, Nvidia’s stock price is steady having climbed just 1.01 per cent in after-hours trading.

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Mobile phones may soon be more powerful than consoles. But where to plug in the controllers…

According to Tony Tamasi, Senior Vice President of Content Technology for Nvidia, the next generation of mobile phone graphics processors will outperform those of the PS3 or Xbox 360.

“The PS3 and Xbox 360 are barely more powerful than mobile devices… The next click of mobile phones will outperform [them],” said Tamasi, referring to the chip generation that will follow the company’s current Tegra 4 model, as seen on the upcoming Nvidia Project Shield portable games console.

While it may seem out of this world that a mobile phone chip may have the GPU processing power of a games console, the PS3 and Xbox 360 are positively archaic when it comes to graphics technology with them both sporting chips capable of around 200GFLOPs, which compares to the 4500GFLOPS (4.5TFLOPS) of Nvidia’s latest flagship PC graphics card the GeForce Titan, or indeed the 1800GFLOPS (1.8TFLOPS) of the upcoming PS4.

In fact, it would ‘only’ take a doubling of current performance to get very close to this 200GFLOPS mark, with Nvidia’s current flagship mobile chip, Tegra 4, already running at 80GLOPS. And at the current rate of mobile processor advancement this doubling would be far from remarkable – after all, the previous generation, Tegra 3, runs at a mere 12 GLFOPS.

What’s more chip design and manufacturing processes have moved on such that the power hit from that level of performance isn’t anything like what it used to be so use in portable devices is viable.

However, while it is possible for a mobile processor to have this horsepower in the not too distant future, it’s not necessarily the case that we’ll see the technology on mobile phones as, even with all the recent enhancements in power consumption reduction, a chip that runs at circa 200GFLOPs is still going to drain a mobile phone size battery very rapidly. Nonetheless, we could certainly see tablets using the device and of course the next generation of Shield (which Nvidia confirmed will be upgraded every year with the latest Tegra chip) will be powered by such a chip – a prospect that certainly piques our interest.

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Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa, the eight-core processor at the heart of the Galaxy S4, will hit the open market in summer, the company has confirmed.

Samsung has confirmed plans to bring its Exynos 5 Octa eight-core processor to third-party companies by the end of the second quarter, heralding a potential boom in high-performance, high-resolution mobile devices and more.

Originally announced back in January, the Exynos 5 Octa is the chip behind the freshly-announced Samsung Galaxy S4 – in some markets, at least. Based on a design principle put forward by Cambridge-based chip design giant ARM known as big.LITTLE, the processor pairs four high-performance Cortex-A15 processing cores – the same as found in other Exynos 5 parts – with four lower-power Cortex-A7 cores. The result is, by the numbers, an eight-core chip – but the idea is to have only one quartet of cores running at any given time.

The design is ARM’s mean of addressing the two biggest demands in the mobile device world: increased processing power and increased battery life. As developers demand more horsepower from smartphones and tablets, the power required by the processor rises; but to get an appreciable increase in battery life, processors need to be designed to draw less power.

It’s a puzzle that big.LITTLE addresses by running the phone on the four low-power cores during non-intensive tasks, such as web browsing, making calls, listening to music or playing back a video. Designed as low-leakage parts, the Cortex-A7 chips don’t offer anywhere near the performance of ARM’s latest Cortex-A15 design – but they also don’t draw nearly as much power. When the phone or tablet switches into a high-demand situation, such as the launch of a game, the Cortex-A15 cores are powered up and all running tasks shunted across before the Cortex-A7 cores are powered down. When their grunt is no longer required, everything is shuffled back to the Cortex-A7 cores so the battery-draining Cortex-A15 cores can be put back to sleep.

It’s far from the first such attempt to pair special low-power cores with more powerful parts in the name of energy efficiency: Nvidia’s last-generation Tegra 3 and current-generation Tegra 4 pack a single-core processor designed to handling background tasks in the hope that the four main cores can spend much of their time powered down. Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa, however, will be the first to market with a full quad-core implementation of ARM’s big.LITTLE.

Currently, the chip is exclusive to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone, although rumours suggest the upcoming Galaxy Note 3 will also include the Exynos 5 Octa. As with previous Exynos chips, Samsung won’t be keeping the device to itself but offering the part to other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as part of its chipmaking business.

Thus far, Samsung hasn’t named any potential customers – but with the Exynos 5 Octa being the first sort-of-eight-core processor for the tablet and smartphone market, it’s likely numerous manufacturers will be jumping on the bandwagon and adopting the design. That also means that, potentially as soon as by the end of the year, we’re likely to see high-resolution, high-performance tablets powered by the chip, which is capable of driving display resolutions up to 2,650×1,600 (WXGA.) The chip is also likely to find favour with single-board computer manufacturers, who are likely to attempt to run all eight cores simultaneously for low-power high-throughput parallel processing tasks.

Sadly, all of this remains in the future – and if you want to play with the Exynos 5 Octa now, you’re going to have to join the queue for a Galaxy S4.

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Austin, Texas (CNN) — Julie Uhrman needed $950,000 from Kickstarter in less than a month to make her dream of an affordable, free-to-play gaming console a reality.

She got it in eight hours — and nearly $8 million more after that.

“It was the opposite of ‘Field of Dreams,’ ” said Uhrman, a gaming-industry veteran and former vice president at IGN. “It was, if you come, we will build this.”

And so was born Ouya, a $99 console that’s shaped like and is just a hair bigger than a Rubik’s Cube. It runs on Google’s Android operating system and requires developers to offer a version of their games for free.

Kickstarter backers will be getting their Ouyas later this month and they’ll go on sale to everyone else in June.

Speaking here at the South by Southwest Interactive festival, Uhrman said she got the idea for Ouya (pronounced OOO-yuh) in response to a video-game industry that to her had grown stale.

No new consoles were announced at last year’s E3 gaming conference by the big three console makers (Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony). In recent years, almost all the most hyped and popular games have been sequels. And the rise of mobile gaming has been limited, turning video gaming into a solitary exercise rather than the social one she remembered growing up.

“The TV is the best screen for playing games,” Uhrman said in an interview-style keynote with editor Joshua Topolsky of tech blog The Verge. “I remember growing up, playing with my sister … I feel like we’ve lost that. I want to bring back the world of TV gaming.”

For gamers, the strength of a console often boils down to the games they can play on it. To that end, Uhrman said 7,000 developers have signed up for Ouya accounts, from big publishers who create multi-million-selling titles like “Halo” down to the smaller independents.

The only requirement, she says, is that the game must be free or offer a free trial before the player has to buy it. How the game will make money — whether it’s through ads, in-game purchases or sales after a free trial — is up to the developer.

“You shouldn’t have to pay so much money to try out a new game,” she said. “We believe that every single game you should try before you buy.”

During the hour-long interview, Topolsky pushed Uhrman on whether the Ouya, which will have 1GB of RAM and run on an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, will be powerful enough to run the kind of immersive, expansive shooters that have made big gaming releases as lucrative as blockbuster movies.

Her answer came in two parts.

“Yes,” she said. “And why would we?

“Those experiences are great on those devices. You wouldn’t want to play those games anywhere else. But we are going to have exclusive games. … We’re going to have inventive, creative, exciting content that no one else has. At $99, it’s not an either-or decision.”

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Uhrman said some top developers will be reworking popular titles for the Ouya. Others, some of whom have never made games before using Android, are crafting new titles, she said.

“We’re going to have our version of those games, but it’s going to be different,” she said. “We will have a first-person shooter … game that you are going to want to play for hours on end.”

Ouya also has partnered with game-streaming site OnLive, meaning that some graphic-intensive games could be playable on the device via the cloud.

Throughout its development, Ouya has been open to its public, inviting them to help make suggestions. When backers pointed out on Reddit that the color-coded buttons on the console’s controller were no good for color-blind players, Ouya replaced them, making the four buttons correspond with the O, U, Y and A in its name.

An Ethernet port was added when some backers outside the United States said they had no access to Wi-Fi, and a USB port was added for the “hardest of the hardcore” players who will want to store more games than the console can handle.

Increasingly, gaming consoles are becoming all-in-one entertainment hubs for the living room, and Ouya will try to compete in that arena as well. The company already has partnerships with Flickster and Vevo and is in talks with major players like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Google.

“We’re pretty confident we’re going to have (that content) at launch or close to launch,” Uhrman said.

Between now and then, she’ll be focusing on two goals.

“We want you to love it,” she said. “And we want it to work.”

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Ouya’s many backers, who helped give the console project a massive $8.6 million cash pile to develop the device, have been promised their devices by the end of the month.

The team behind the Ouya, a compact ARM-based microconsole running Google’s Android mobile operating system, has announced that the device will begin shipping to backers by the end of the month.

The Ouya console, which packs a mobile-centric Nvidia Tegra 3 low-power ARM chip and 1GB of RAM into a miniature casing designed to stream cloud-based games via troubled specialist OnLive as well as play locally-rendered casual gaming titles, launched on crowd-funding service Kickstarter with an eye-catching promise: an impressive games console for just $99. The low price and support of numerous industry luminaries who pledged ports and exclusives for the platform won it rapid support, smashing past its original $950,000 funding goal and finishing with a whopping $8.6 million in the bank – minus Kickstarter’s commission, of course.

The timing of the Kickstarter launch was undeniably lucky: the project’s page was filled with ‘concept’ imagery, showing artists’ impressions of what the device, its controller and even the central user interface could look like were the team to receive enough funding. Since then, Kickstarter has banned product renders and other concept images, demanding that hardware projects be more open and honest by showing actual prototype hardware to prospective buyers.

The news early last month that the Ouya console would receive annual hardware updates in a reflection of the rapidly-changing smartphone and tablet markets, with which the device has considerably more in common than an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, shocked some – and none more so than those who had contributed to the project’s success by pledging $99 or more to pre-order the device and had yet to receive any hardware for their hard-earned cash.

Worry not, the company has announced: the devices are on their way. In the 19th project update posted to Kickstarter late last night, the team behind the console promised that production is under way and shipping will begin on the 28th of March. Production volumes have not been confirmed, but the team promises that ‘tens of thousands‘ of its pre-order customers will get their devices by the end of the month, while a planned retail launch in June that will see the console hit bricks-and-mortar shop shelves is still on-track.

The team also offered a few more details about the games early adopters can expect, including a deal with Portal and Left 4 Dead co-creator Kim Swift to create an Ouya-exclusive title, a port of first-person puzzle shooter The Ball from Tripwire Interactive, and action-RGP ChronoBlade also making an appearance in the near future.

Whether Ouya’s console can succeed against smartphones and tablets with similar specifications – not to mention Nvidia’s upcoming Android-powered Shield hand-held – once the hype of its crowd-funded production has died away, however, remains to be seen.

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Nvidia’s record profits are helped by serious growth in its Tegra business, but gaming remains an important part of the company’s outlook – with founder Jen-Hsun Huang having particular praise for free-to-play titles.

Nvidia’s latest financial figures are out, and if the global market is in a slump somebody forgot to tell the green camp: the company has shown impressive growth, but it’s not in the PC market.

According to the company’s quarterly earnings report, published late yesterday, its year-on-year revenue has hit a record high of $4.28 billion – 7.1 per cent up on last year’s figures – despite a dip quarter-on-quarter that saw it end the year on a 8.1 per cent sequential slump. The company’s quarterly net profit figure is the stand-out headliner, however, growing 50 per cent year-on-year to $174 million – despite a stock repurchase programme that saw the company spending $100 million in the last financial quarter and a further $46.9 million in dividends to shareholders, resulting in a dip from Q3′s $209 million profit figure.

Nvidia’s secret to riding out the flagging PC market is, if you hadn’t guessed, Tegra. The company’s system-on-chip processor division, responsible for one of the most popular chips for Android – and, more recently, Windows RT – tablets, grew its revenue 50 per cent in 2012 hitting a high of $540 million. While that’s only a small fraction of the company’s entire $4.28 billion turnover for the year, that figure is only likely to grow further in the coming years. Nvidia’s GPU division, meanwhile, continues to dominate Nvidia’s earnings, pulling in $3.2 billion in revenue for the financial year.

Speaking in an earnings call with press and analysts, Nvidia co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang was clear about his company’s focus on growing its Tegra platform to account for a larger proportion of the company’s revenue – a plan which, he claims, is going well. ‘At this point we have more design wins [with Tegra 4] than we had at this point with Tegra 3,‘ Huang claims. ‘You also heard we are now sampling our 4G LTE modem, and this is a pretty large market. It’s still early in the overall modem market. It’s about 150 million units large, projected this year, [and] growing about 50% per year. The overall connected device market is probably about one billion, north of a billion units.

‘So there is a lot of LTE 4G modems that need to be shipped. And this is really the first year where we have the ability to engage the market. So we are really super excited about it. We are going to engage it very very hard. And we are sampling modems around the world now. And so those are good growth indicators for Tegra 4. In the first quarter, always we ramp down Tegra 3 as we ramp up Tegra 4. And hopefully in the future as we get more and more into lower-end devices where the lifecycle is a little longer, this transitional effect would be less pronounced. But this is something we expected and is something that will transition into Tegra 4 as fast as we can.’

With Tegra 4 expected to ship in volume in July this year, Huang was doing his best to push the technology ahead of rival devices from ARM’s other licensees, like Qualcomm’s currently-shipping Snapdragon S4 Pro or Samsung’s upcoming eight-core Exynos Octa. ‘[Soon] you will see performance evaluations of Tegra 4, and I think you’ll be quite pleased with them. Tegra 4 is many times higher performance than Tegra 3 in many areas and it’s designed to be very high performance. There’s a lot of confidence in why we can deliver that performance leadership. We said that about Tegra 3 and I think we delivered on that. This is an area that we’re quite good at. So, whether it’s CPU performance or GPU performance or camera performance, these are three areas that we’ve made big breakthroughs on.‘

That’s not to say Nvidia is moving away from graphics, of course. During the call, Huang described Kepler as ‘the best GPU we’ve ever built – the best GPU the industry has ever built,‘ promising to bring the same chipset to its Quadro workstation line as quickly as possible. As for its consumer line, Huang claimed that the explosion in free-to-play titles will help drive growth there too: ‘We have always said that PC gaming is vibrant. We have said that PC gaming is in fact growing, and the reason for that is because the PC platform is open and it allows for a lot of innovation, not only for technology but also for business models.

‘One of the most important new growth dynamic has to do with free to play. Free to play is really a wonderful business model. So ,these free to play platforms are fabulous for PCs – and it attracts new gamers.’

Naturally, nobody at Nvidia would be pushed on unannounced products or next-generation release schedules, but from the company’s financials the future certainly looks bright.

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The Surface RT (left) and the Surface Pro.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

With the Surface Pro set to go on sale Saturday, consumers will have a pretty stark choice between two Microsoft tablets that look remarkably similar.

When I walked into my local Los Angeles Microsoft Store earlier this week — where the Pro was already on display next to the RT model — it was hard to tell right off the bat which Surface was which.

Not surprising, since both
tablets display the same Metro screen and there’s a mere 4.2mm difference in thickness.

So, let’s recap what sets the Pro apart from the RT version.

Price: The RT model with
Microsoft Office starts at $499. The Pro without Microsoft Office starts at $899.

Compatibility: The RT model is not compatible with older Windows applications. The Pro is.

Thickness/weight: The Pro model is about 0.5 inches and 2 pounds, the RT model about 0.35 inches and 1.5 pounds.

Disk space/storage tech: The Pro comes in 64GB and 128GB versions, RT in 32GB and 64GB. Note that the
Surface Pro‘s solid-state drive is fast, the same class of speedy SSDs you find in mainstream laptops.

And there was a lot of confusion this week about the Pro’s available disk space, forcing Microsoft to correct itself. The company originally said (in a statement sent to the media) that the Pro had only 23GB available for the user on the 64GB model and 83GB free on the 128GB model. On Wednesday, Microsoft issued an erratum of sorts, upping the available space to 30GB and 90GB, respectively. And if you get rid of the recovery partition, you can retrieve even more disk space.

Battery life: Big difference here. While the Pro gets between 4 and 5 hours, RT gets about twice that.

Processor: Night and day in this case too. The Pro packs a powerful Intel Ivy Bridge chip, the RT a considerably slower Nvidia Tegra 3.

Display: The Pro has a killer 1,920×1,080 display, RT a pedestrian 1,366×768 resolution. Both are 10.6 inches.

In summary, with RT you’re getting a tablet, with the Pro you’re getting an ultrabook squeezed into a tablet. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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Ouya’s Android-based console will be available for $99.99.

(Credit:
Ouya)

Ouya’s console will be updated each year with new and better components, the company’s founder and CEO said earlier today on the sidelines of the DICE Summit.

Speaking to The Verge in an interview published today, Ouya chief Julie Uhrman said that starting next year and every year thereafter, the company will bundle the most powerful mobile processors available in its console.

“Our plan is to have a yearly refresh of Ouya where we leverage the best-performing chips and take advantage of falling component prices to create the best experience we can at the $99 price point,” Uhrman told The Verge.

Ouya’s console, which was opened up for preorders earlier this week and hits wide retail availability in June, is running the Tegra 3 processor. However, the Tegra 4 is right around the corner. Each year, new and better processors are made available, and the console’s
Android-based gaming could do well with better chips.

That said, the console market is notorious for its lack of major annual upgrades. Console makers Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, tend to not update their products for several years. The
Wii U, for example, launched last year — six years after its predecessor, the
Wii, launched.

Game consoles require such lengthy refresh cycles because of the proprietary development requirements that go into making a game for those products. Ouya, however, is based on Android, making it much easier for developers to port titles to the hardware.

For now, gamers can start preordering the Ouya console online. Kickstarter backers who helped get Ouya off the ground will get the console in March. Buyers from the Ouya Web site will get the device in April. Those who wait to buy it at retail or preorder it from a major retailer will get the device in June. The console will be available for $99.99. An extra controller will set customers back $49.99.

An extra Ouya controller will cost $49.99.

(Credit:
Ouya)

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The Ouya console will be followed by a successor next year, and each year thereafter, as the company adopts smartphone market methodologies.

Ouya, the cut-price Android-based games console that smashed records when it launched on the Kickstarter crowd-funding platform – raising a whopping $8.6 million from its original goal of $950,000 – will be the first in a regular series of devices, the company has revealed.

At its heart, the Ouya is an Android tablet minus the display: the compact box packs an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor running at 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and an HDMI port supporting 1080p HD video and 5.1 digital surround-sound outputs. 802.11/g/b/n Wi-Fi is included along with a wired Ethernet port, while a Bluetooth radio connects the wireless controller and a micro-USB port allows for development, debugging and side-loading of apps and games.

If that sounds a little weedy for a console, that doesn’t appear to have stopped developers announcing their plans to support the device. Numerous companies have come forward with announcements that they will be launching games on the gadget, with Double Fine’s latest title Reds using the Ouya as its exclusive console launch platform. Troubled cloud gaming company OnLive has also announced its support for the console via its game streaming technology – little surprise, given that OnLive already has an Android app that will need little tweaking before release.

When you’re launching as a $99 console using the same kind of hardware you’d find in a high-end – or, given it’s a last-generation Tegra 3 chip and just 1GB of RAM, mid-range – smartphone, you can’t expect the five-year-plus lifecycles of the big boys, though. Even so, the company’s proclamation that it’s planning an annual release cycle is likely to come as something of a shock to those who have already parted with their cash for pre-orders of the first generation units.

In an interview with Engadget, company chief executive Julie Uhrman explained that Ouya would be following the same development cycle as the smartphone and tablet market, rather than that of rival consoles. ‘There will be a new Ouya every year‘ Uhrman admitted. ‘There will be an Ouya 2 and an Ouya 3.‘

That the tablet-inspired device should be following a tablet-inspired development schedule shouldn’t really come as a surprise, of course: when you’re packing the very latest hardware into a £400 games console, you can afford to over-spec the device and have it last for years to come; when you’re dealing with last-generation parts and a strict $99 retail price level, however, it’s time to take a different tack.

Uhrman was also keen to point out that existing games will not be lost: a game purchased on an Ouya 1 will work fine on an Ouya 2, an Ouya 3 and so forth. Each game is linked to a user’s account, much like titles purchased through Google Play – not supported by the Ouya, incidentally, in favour of its own bespoke marketplace – follow a user through multiple phone and tablet upgrades.

Initial indications are that the Ouya is proving popular with an impressive number of pre-orders, but how it will fare post-launch – and in the face of Nvidia’s own Tegra 4-based Project Shield gaming system – remains to be seen.

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A big ole pile of phones.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

This story, originally published September 14, 2012, updates often to reflect the arrival of new phones.

“Which phone should I buy?” As phone reviewers, this is the single most common question readers like you ask us every day. With the launch of a new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone and upcoming BlackBerry Q10 joining the Apple iPhone 5, a legion of excellent
Android handsets, and the rise of Microsoft’s Windows phones, the choices are more numerous than ever before.

On the bright side, options a good thing — if you’re armed with the knowledge necessary to make smart shopping decisions. Sit tight as we lay down what you need to find the right mobile platform and model for you.

Which operating system is for you?

iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Each has its own pluses and minuses, and will appeal to people differently depending on what they want. While a unique phone design might lure you to a new OS, many people prefer to start with the platform and go from there.

iOS’ strengths are its well-integrated ecosystem, very full apps marketplace, and fairly intuitive interface, but you’re pretty much locked in to
iTunes for content.

Android is the most customizable and a wonderland for tinkerers. However, most manufacturers and carriers add a specialized twist, which can lead to slower OS updates and to an interface that’s less easy to use from the get-go.

Windows Phone 8 is building in features that make for good higher-end phones. Its fresh, simple interface is appealing, but power users won’t find it as deep or as flexible. A thinner-but-growing app ecosystem is another weakness for the app-crazy.

(Credit:
CNET)

The newly rebooted BlackBerry 10 OS will win back longtime fans with its rich communication, e-mail, and security features. However, its gesture-based navigation isn’t the most intuitive and the nascent OS lacks a killer feature that will propel happy users to switch from another OS.

Before you begin choosing your OS, there are a few things to keep in mind. With Android phones in particular, you have to think about the OS version and level of extra software customization. Android phones suffer from fragmentation, as carriers and manufacturers add their own software layers that sometimes get in the way of an update to the next generation. As such, we’d avoid any new phone running Android 2.3 Gingerbread or older — stick with the now slightly-older Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or preferably, pick a phone with Android 4.1 or Android 4.2.

Of course, true Android devotees should spring for the latest Google Nexus handset, the LG Nexus 4, which runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Higher-end phones, and Google Nexus devices especially, are typically the first to receive OS updates.

We’d also completely bypass Windows Phone 7 handsets, even if they’re inexpensive. They just won’t see software advances. Buy a Windows Phone 8 device instead. Not only will you receive OS updates, you’ll also be more likely to get a phone with a faster processor and sharper screen.

iPhones have the advantage of receiving the same OS upgrade at the same time, and the newest OS is usually available on multiple devices.
iOS 6, for instance, will work on the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, and iPhone 4, but not on the iPhone 3GS or earlier.

Best iPhone: In the easiest pick of this entire list, choose the iPhone 5 (multiple carriers)

Best Android phones: HTC Droid DNA (Verizon), Samsung Galaxy S3 (multiple carriers), LG Nexus 4 (T-Mobile, unlocked), Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (multiple carriers), LG Optimus G (Sprint, ATT).

Best Windows phone: Nokia Lumia 920 (ATT), HTC Windows Phone 8X (ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon).

Best BlackBerry: In the U.S., both the Z10 and keyboard-equipped Q10 are expected in the March or April timeframe. The Z10, however, is already available in some parts of the world.

The BlackBerry Z10 (pictured) and Q10 give the longtime mobile platform new life.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

Do you shop by phone or by carrier?

If you’re happy with your carrier, or if you’re within an upgrade window, you’ll probably pick from your carrier’s choices. However, if you’re off-contract or in between contract cycles, the world is your oyster.

Things you have to consider include: contract or no contract, a small data plan or a large one, and which carrier covers your area best.

In the U.S., national and regional carriers sign you on for a two-year contract (this is three years in Canada), have a strong retail presence, and offer phones at a subsidy (hence cheaper). They also typically have the widest coverage and the lowest up-front costs, and offer premium phones.

However, every national carrier also has a prepaid option. Some, like, T-Mobile and ATT, offer a different, usually cheaper, range of phones. Verizon lets you buy nearly any phone at retail value and then pay month-to-month; T-Mobile has a hybrid with its cheaper-in-the-long-run Value pricing. Sprint manages prepaid options through its Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile brands.

Depending on how you use your phone, a prepaid service could work out to be cheaper over time. You also won’t have to worry about breaking your contract and paying a fee.

(Credit:
CNET)

Several prepaid carriers operate on their own networks as well, like MetroPCS and Cricket Wireless. These providers have regional footprints and are sometimes slower to adopt premium phones and improve on their technology. MetroPCS was first with LTE, but its network is much slower and its coverage area is smaller. Cricket doesn’t have 4G, but it does offer a unique music service.

U.S. Cellular is a regional network with both prepaid and postpaid options. There are many more carrier services as well. Get to know them better here.

Voice and data coverage are also key. There are carrier maps you can look at to see roughly if your area is taken care of, but asking neighbors is usually more reliable. All carriers are still rolling out 4G LTE networks, but Verizon is far ahead of the others. Sprint has the smallest number of markets, currently, and T-Mobile is using the pretty fast HSPA+ for 4G.

The carrier’s pricing structure is also something to think about. Verizon and ATT have pooled data plans that could be better or worse for you or your family, but ATT’s aren’t mandatory for existing customers. Sprint and T-Mobile offer unlimited data plans.

Favorite ATT phones: Samsung Galaxy S3, Apple iPhone 5, Nokia Lumia 920, LG Optimus G, Pantech Discover.

Favorite Boost Mobile phones: LG Venice, Samsung Galaxy S II 4G, HTC Evo Design 4G, LG Rumor Reflex.

Favorite Cricket Wireless phones: Apple iPhone 5, HTC One SV, Samsung Galaxy S3.

Favorite MetroPCS phones: Samsung Galaxy S3, LG Motion 4G, Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G, Huawei Activa 4G.

Favorite Sprint phones: Samsung Galaxy S3, Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, LG Optimus G, HTC Evo 4G LTE.

Favorite T-Mobile phones: LG Nexus 4, Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, HTC One S.

Favorite U.S. Cellular phones: Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, LG Splendor.

Favorite Verizon phones: HTC Droid DNA, Samsung Galaxy S3, Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD, Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

Favorite Virgin Mobile phones: Apple iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy S II 4G, HTC One V.

Which experience: Premium or functional?

One big question to ask yourself when choosing a mobile phone is how you plan to use it. If you plan to use your phone as your primary camera; play a lot of graphically rich games; stream a lot of data; store a lot of photos, videos, e-books, and audio files; and stare at the screen for hours, then a premium smartphone is best for you.

The cream of the crop will usually have a big, high-definition screen, larger storage capacities, a higher-resolution camera, longer battery life, and a faster processor. Power doesn’t come cheap, since top-tier smartphones typically run anywhere from $199.99 to $299.99, though there are promotional deals.

Simple phones aren’t going away.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

As nice as the premium smartphones are, for some people, they’re just overkill. All the operating systems bring their software power to handsets of all shapes and sizes, which means that hardware capabilities are often the only thing that separates the tiers. If you’re less picky about having the best of the best, you could walk away with a smartphone that runs all the same apps as the big boys for half the price. These phones typically cost from $0 to $150, depending on the carrier and the promotional deal.

For those looking only to text or make calls, each carrier offers messaging phones (many with keyboards) and simple phones (many with a flip design). These phones might seem pricier than you expect because the carrier isn’t helping subsidize the cost, but the upside is that you won’t have to fork over money for a pricey data plan each month. You can find simple phones for between $15 and $80.

Best high-end phones: Apple iPhone 5 (ATT, Sprint, Verizon), Samsung Galaxy S3 (five carriers), HTC Droid DNA (Verizon), Nokia Lumia 920 (ATT), LG Nexus 4 (T-Mobile, unlocked)

Best midrange phones: Motorola Droid Razr M (Verizon), Pantech Discover (ATT), Nokia Lumia 820/822/810 (ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile), HTC One X (ATT), Sony Xperia TL (ATT)

Best basic phones: Samsung Gusto 2 (Verizon), Kyocera DuraXT (Sprint), LG Rumor Reflex (Sprint), Samsung T159 (T-Mobile).

Design: Blend in or stand out?

A phone is such a deeply personal product, you might find yourself strongly drawn to one style or another. If you prefer a low-profile phone, good news. Most are black or dark-gray shingles, though white has become a popular color choice. Others come in edgier colors like red, cyan, and yellow, or with distinct shapes, edges, and backings.

Whether you love it or hate it, the Nokia Lumia 920 design makes a statement.

(Credit:
Nokia)

The Pantech Discover features dual 3D surround speakers and a comfortable contoured design. HTC’s Droid DNA is very thin despite its massive 5-inch screen, sports flashy red metallic trim, and has a comfortable soft-touch back. The ultramodern-looking Nokia Lumia 920 also flaunts numerous and wild colors, as does the svelte HTC Windows Phone 8X.

We still love the elegant, industrial designs of Apple’s iPhone series, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S3′s thin, molded-from-plastic, smooth, and attractive curves, but the design of these phones has become ubiquitous (and therefore stand out a little less).

Favorite stylish phones: HTC Droid DNA (Verizon), HTC Windows Phone 8X (ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon), Motorola Droid Razr M (Verizon), Pantech Discover (ATT), Nokia Lumia 920 (ATT).

Do you like a large, medium, or small screen?

A phone’s single most important physical element is its screen size. You’ll find the largest screens within the Android camp, the most massive one available belonging to the tabletlike Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which features a whopping 5.5-inch display. (Huawei’s Ascend Mate has a 6.1-inch screen, but not carrier partners yet.) Meanwhile, the HTC Droid DNA also sports a gargantuan 5-inch display as well, complete with a sharp 1080p HD resolution (440 pixels per inch).

The Samsung Galaxy S3, Nokia Lumia 920, BlackBerry Z10, and LG Nexus 4 also offer outstanding viewing with high-resolution displays of 4 inches or greater. As you can imagine, looking at everything from Web pages and photos to movies on these devices is an awesome experience.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 suggests a tablet with its mammoth 5.5-inch screen.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Still, others prefer a smaller device that’s more pocketable, and there are plenty of those to choose from. There’s the medium-size Motorola Droid Razr M with an edge-to-edge display that, despite its slim, compact chassis, features a vibrant 4.3-inch screen.

For those with small hands or seriously tight pockets, the compact 3.1-inch BlackBerry Q10 is a solid choice. Not only does it sport a high-contrast OLED screen, it runs the recent BlackBerry 10 software and has a well-designed physical QWERTY keyboard. Another superb pint-size option is the iPhone 4S, which, thanks to the iPhone 5′s arrival, has dropped markedly in price.

Best “small” (under 4 inches) phones: Blackberry Q10 (forthcoming), iPhone 4S (multiple carriers).

Best “medium” (4-4.5 inches) phones: Motorola Droid Razr M (Verizon), Apple iPhone 5 (multiple carriers), BlackBerry Z10 (multiple carriers).

Best “large” (4.7-5.5 inches) phones: HTC Droid DNA (Verizon), Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (multiple carriers), Samsung Galaxy S3 (Verizon, Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular), Nokia Lumia 920 (ATT), LG Nexus 4 (T-Mobile, unlocked).

How often will you use the camera?

If you’re like us, your smartphone camera has become your primary shooter for casual, day-to-day moments. It’s also a chief selling point for any phone.

Nokia, Samsung, Apple, and HTC are our go-to manufacturers for smartphone cameras, not quite in that order. Nokia’s 808 PureView pretty much wows with its 41-megapixel sensor and some clever “cropping” techniques. However, the Lumia 920′s 8.7-megapixel camera, which uses PureView processing algorithms (but a different lens), isn’t quite as good.

Samsung’s 8-megapixel cameras also take some consistently great shots, even in automatic mode. The Galaxy Note series and Galaxy S3 phones seem to share the same camera characteristics, and we’re not talking about the fancy sharing software, just photos in the raw.

The Nokia 808 PureView’s 41-megapixel camera is large and in charge.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

The iPhone 5 camera is also at the top of the class, and pumps out consistently good photos in macro and low-light scenarios without you having to fuss with settings. It also packs a panoramic mode with 28-megapixel resolution.

HTC’s camera takes photos with alarming speed, and while the picture quality is good, it isn’t the best. However, HTC’s track record is far better than Motorola’s, which produces 8-megapixel cameras that can’t quite get shots as sharp or as colorful as its competitors’.

Best camera phones today: Nokia 808 PureView (unlocked), Apple iPhone 5 (multiple carriers), Samsung Galaxy S3 (multiple carriers), HTC Droid DNA (Verizon), Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (multiple carriers).

How fast a phone do you want?

The mobile phone arms race is as hot as ever and, much as with desktop computers of old, manufacturers constantly vie for performance bragging rights. Similarly, elite smartphone shoppers pore over spec sheets and feature lists in a quest for the ultimate handset.

Processors: Apple A6, Samsung Exynos 4, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4

(Credit:
Screenshot by CNET)

Apple has introduced its A6 processor, and at launch little was known other than the promise that it’s two times faster than the A5 chipset in the iPhone 4S. We can now say the dual-core A6 chip does help the iPhone 5 feel faster and more responsive. Powerful Android and Windows Phone handsets still by-and-large use Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus or S4 Pro processors.

Manufacturers, however, have really begun to snap up LTE-ready quad-core chips into U.S. smartphones. The first was the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which uses Samsung’s own quad-core Exynos processor. Other phones such as the LG Nexus 4, HTC Droid DNA, and LG Optimus G have Qualcomm’s latest quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chip. (Sadly, the Nexus 4 lacks 4G LTE support.) HTC’s One X+ draws its considerable computing power from quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 silicon.

Honestly, though, a phone’s clock speed is a relative value. A slower CPU can make efficient software fly while the opposite is true of a handset weighed down with useless apps.

For example, the old Samsung Galaxy Nexus running pure Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is one of the swiftest-handling phones we’ve ever used, while the iPhone 4S has been buttery-smooth.

On the other hand, the HTC Droid DNA is loaded to the gills with Verizon bloatware plus HTC’s Sense UI on top of Jelly Bean yet is the fastest Android phone we’ve ever tested. Check out our quad-core smartphone shootout to see just how much faster quad-core phones really are.

Quad-core specimens: HTC Droid DNA (Verizon), Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (multiple carriers), LG Nexus 4 (T-Mobile, unlocked), LG Optimus G (Sprint, ATT), HTC One X+ (ATT).

Dual-core smartphone speed demons: Samsung Galaxy S3 (Verizon, Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile), Motorola Droid Razr HD (Verizon), HTC Evo LTE/HTC One X/HTC One S.

Will you use your phone for calls?

These days, calls are often the last thing on a phone owner’s mind, but if you care about talking in addition to your texts, games, and e-mails, you have a bit of a chore ahead.

Unfortunately, call quality is the hardest attribute to consistently pin down, since it vacillates so widely based on network strength in your location, your building, and even the time of day. We test call quality in each phone review, but what’s good for us at the CNET offices in San Francisco or New York might be terrible in your neighborhood.

Our best advice is to make a test call from a retail location (even if you’re buying online) to check the call quality, and to ask your neighbors for an assessment. Some people still write us saying they can’t get reception in their signal-blocking homes, but they can get it on the street.

How critical is long battery life?

Even the most high-octane superphone becomes a fancy paperweight when it runs out of juice. Compounding the problem are the swelling screen sizes and multiplying processing cores cropping up in modern CPU chips. Then there are 4G LTE radios that suck down data at lightning speed, but if abused, will soak up electricity like a gaggle of thirsty vampires.

Motorola’s Droid Razr Maxx HD tops the charts with a 3,300mAh battery — wow.

(Credit:
Motorola)

That said, a few handsets manage to sagely balance their energy consumption with swift performance. Other devices are also equipped with large-capacity batteries of over 2,000mAh or more, providing a deep reservoir to draw from.

Here’s a list of phones we’ve tested personally that have demonstrated outstanding longevity or that likely will based on their components. Read more about the future of smartphone battery life here.

Phones with superior battery life: Motorola Droid Razr Maxx (Verizon), Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD (Verizon), Samsung Galaxy Express (ATT), Pantech Discover (ATT).

The keyboard question

Now that BlackBerry is back with the Q10, people who aren’t ready to break their physical keyboard habit have another option from the best in the business.

Yet, if the BlackBerry OS isn’t your cup of tea, things get tricky. The number of smartphones with actual keyboards is rapidly shrinking, and there’s no iOS or Windows Phone device that’s QWERTY-equipped. Even worse, many phones that do fall into this category come with shoddily constructed keyboards and painful ergonomics. That said, there are some modern keyboard phones we think are worthy of recommendation. Here are our top picks for devices that provide a pleasant typing experience.

Phones with great keyboards: BlackBerry Q10 (forthcoming), Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE (Sprint), Motorola Droid 4 (Verizon), LG Optimus Slider (Virgin Mobile).

Final tips

In the end, whether you choose the newest thing or pick something more practical, we recommend two more tips. First, keep an eye out for seasonal deals, especially if you’re buying phones for the family. Also, carriers love to suddenly offer special (often Web-only) discounts, typically around holiday weekends.

Second, it’s a good idea to know how much time you have to return a phone without penalty, just in case you need to switch devices after your initial buy. Carriers usually offer a 14-day to 30-day return window, though you may have to pay for calls and data usage during that time.

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