I have to say, the Mobile World Congress in Spain has really grown up to be a big, strapping lad, and nVidia is a big part of that right now. Sadly, nVidia is only playing with Microsoft, so the other kids will just have to wait their turn. nVidia is now pimping their APX 2500 Ultra-Low Power GeForce chipset for Windows Mobile devices. What you see to your left is nVidia’s reference platform, a development mule designed to allow developers the tools they need to get it working.

Now lets look at the specs. The chipset is designed to run optimally in WinMo. Get this: nVidia is saying the chipset can enable a handheld device to display 10 hours of 720p video. That’s 1280×720. It can also handle HDMI, composite, and S-video outputs, as well as external monitors up to 1280×1024. For 3D acceleration, we’re talking OpenGL ES 2.0 and Direct3D Mobile support and programmable pixel, vertex, and lighting shaders. Finally it can encode and decode H.264, MPEG-4, decode WMV, AAC, AMR, MP3, and WMA, and can handle 12MP camera sensors.

How many of you wanna bet that this means XBOX Mobile before this time next year? At the very least, an announcement. As for availability, they are sampling now and will be entering full production by the end of the second Quarter this year.

written by Tyler Regas