How powerful will Nintendo's next handheld be?

[HoloDust]

michael_stutzer said:

HoloDust said:

michael_stutzer said:

It would be more expensive to do hardware weaker than Vita in 2017 or so. I'm expecting an equivalent to a modern budget phone SOC of that time. Something like Snapdragon 400 today. 

Um, Snapdragon 400 uses Adreno 305/306...which is around Vita.

You sure you were not thinking of Snapdragon 805 and Adreno 420 which is some 5-6x Vita?

I am saying that they would use a budget phone SOC in 2017. Snapdragon 400 is a budget phone SOC today. "Of that time" and "today" were the keywords there. 

You're right, I've misinterpreted that part completely and went straight for last line.

GTAexpert said:

HoloDust said:

Um, Snapdragon 400 uses Adreno 305/306...which is around Vita.

You sure you were not thinking of Snapdragon 805 and Adreno 420 which is some 5-6x Vita?

Nintendo's next handheld would certainly not be that powerful. Their handhelds always have weak hardware for the time they release to maximise profits as people buy them anyways.

Unless you thought I think that 2016/17 high end SoCs would be Nintendo's pick (which I don't)...

...Adreno 305 performs close to iPhone 5's GPU, which performs close to Vita (this is speculative though, since there are no real headon tests, but that's what usual consensus is).

iPhone 5 was top performing phone in 2012, today both Adreno 420 and A8 from iPhone 6 outperform it 6x.

I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that in 2016/17 that sort of performance will be mid range.