Nvidia preparing Tegra 2 processors for 3D phones and tablets

Nintendo's hoping that the 3DS’s 3D display is its Unique Selling Point - offering up three-dimensional images while its competitors from portable consoles to mobile phones can only offer your bog-standard 2D.

That may be set to change though if today’s rumours are to be believed.

An unnamed source, reportedly from within Nvidia, has leaked out an image pertaining to be a slide for the company’s upcoming presentation at the Mobile World Congress, to be held in mid-February, that shows two new Tegra 2 chips designed solely for 3D mobile displays.

According to a leaked slide, the Tegra 2 3D chips (to give them their official name) will consist of dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processors clocked up to 1.2GHz, and are intended to go into production in the spring - right about the time the 3DS launches.

Even if the rumour is true (and it looks fairly believable to us), it took almost exactly a year after Nvidia officially announced the Tegra 2 for the CPU/GPU to start appearing in consumer electronics, so I wouldn’t get too nervous about having your new smartphone made obsolete three months down the line.

Nvidia is also no stranger to the mysterious world of 3D graphics, having been a major instigator for ‘with-glasses’ technology in the PC sphere, with its Nvidia Vision shutter-based tech.

Still, would you want to purchase a 3D phone over a standard 2D one? We’d love to hear from real people (and not spambots, thanks) in the comments below.