To me its just interesting how much Mobile is closing the gap. December should be a great month for Nintendo. Im looking forward to gaming in 2019.

It's not closing the gap.

Even in 7nm, anything close to XBO power in such a small casing like a tablet would totally overheat and shut down in minutes, if not seconds. It still needs active cooling to achieve that, something tablets normally do not have.

A Ryzen 5 2500U found in fairly thin Laptops comes close to XBO power, a 2700U would actually surpass it. But in both cases, that's peak power, and I don't think they can keep those GPU boosts over prolonged times even though they have a 15W TDP, about 3 times what tablets have. In other words, while the A12 could reach XBO power (and, like I said, even then probably just on a technicality), there's no way it could hold that much power.

Mobile/handheld gaming does have three limiting factors- size/overheating/battery life. All three of those are solved by improving chip technology as you can genererate more quality images with less power. I do believe for sure 7nm tech will be able to generate xbox one graphics maybe even closer to PS4 base.

Switch is quite "near" X1/PS4 graphics. But by next gen time that won't be enough to get ports.

X1 is like 1,2 TF and next gen on 12-15TF level (less than that would be low considering X1X already cross 6TF), I know TF isn't all but just as generic measuring the gap we can stay on it. So if Switch Pro or Switch 2 only get inside 1,2-1,6 TF level of processing power/graphics it won't receive AAA 3rd party (not that it even needs, AA and Indies would be enough to fill the gaps on Nintendo releasing schedule).

More important than reaching near X1 or PS4 level of graphic would be similar tech of PS5 and X2, because not using similar tech (even if a lot less powered) would be worse on the scalability and porting than the pure power gap.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/apple-says-its-new-ipad-is-as-powerful-as-xbox-one/1100-6462892/

I haven't benchmarked it myself. I am going by what Apple is saying and Phil Spencer himself hasn't shot it down actually complimented the comparison. 

It's not closing the gap.

Even in 7nm, anything close to XBO power in such a small casing like a tablet would totally overheat and shut down in minutes, if not seconds. It still needs active cooling to achieve that, something tablets normally do not have.

A Ryzen 5 2500U found in fairly thin Laptops comes close to XBO power, a 2700U would actually surpass it. But in both cases, that's peak power, and I don't think they can keep those GPU boosts over prolonged times even though they have a 15W TDP, about 3 times what tablets have. In other words, while the A12 could reach XBO power (and, like I said, even then probably just on a technicality), there's no way it could hold that much power.

As long as PS4 and XBO are getting ports, Switch will also get ports as the extra cost is more than outweighted by the extra sales. If the Next-Gen consoles release late next year, it would mean that support is guaranteed until at least 2023, at which point the Switch would be over 6 years old and sales should start to drop anyway by then. I'm expecting a successor for 2024-2025 anyway, so it wouldn't matter much in any which way.

That would require quite the jump in performance. Even the upcoming Snapdragon 8cx only reaches about Switch GPU power (and a Tegra X1 running at full speed still has a 30% faster GPU than that!)

More probably, it's duable to a technicality: XBO calculates FP16 (half precision) at the same speed as FP32 ("full" precision), while mobile chips can calculate those at twice the speed. So in FP16, they could catch up to XBO in GFLOPS due to this. But videogames need FP32 most of the time, so an A12 Bionic wouldn't be able to handle the graphics in those games in any way.

Mobile/handheld gaming does have three limiting factors- size/overheating/battery life. All three of those are solved by improving chip technology as you can genererate more quality images with less power. I do believe for sure 7nm tech will be able to generate xbox one graphics maybe even closer to PS4 base.

Mobile/handheld gaming does have three limiting factors- size/overheating/battery life. All three of those are solved by improving chip technology as you can genererate more quality images with less power. I do believe for sure 7nm tech will be able to generate xbox one graphics maybe even closer to PS4 base.

Here is the thin with this.... you are right. But maybe your timeframe or expectations are just off. 

I mean its common sense really, if at 20nm (which is what the X1 APU in the NS is based n we have around 0.5TF of GPU power, then a 7nm APU that takes up the same physical size should be capable of at least 1TF - 1.2TF of GPU power while being more efficient in the process. Which will Put a NS2 at around the power of the XB1.

But what you are missing here is that that isn't new. Technology always gets better The PSV could play PS1 games, the NS can mtch the PS3/360 and even run PS4/XB1 games. And the NS2 will run PS4/XB1 games a lot better than the NS can run them. 

But all that is moot when you consider that for every jump seen in a mobile based hardware, there is an equally big one seen in desktop based hardware. The ceiling keeps getting raised so to speak.

When PS5/X2 get released ports for PS4 and X1 will drop within a year or two depending on the sales of the HW and SW. And the fact they are willing to go to the lower power PS4 because its 100M userbase (and X1 benefits because of close level of HW) will probably buy a lot of SW doesn't mean they will want to drop even further to get the lower sales of Switch on that same game (for the ones that are already selling good on Switch sure they may get it, but that isn't what we are talking here).

Switch already don't get most AAA 3rd party now, and won't get them on PS5/X2 gen with a Switch Pro even if Switch Pro gets same capacity of PS4/X1.

Pemalite will show in near future to talk on how it is meaningless comparison on half precision. PS4 got an update to allow half precision and people were expecting massive upgrades on games, nothing really occured.

Sorry, but no. It never solve the problem, it just push the envelope up. These three will always be limiting factors together with power and price.

Ya it seems like powerful handhelds have consistently been ~7-8 years behind powerful consoles.

Game Gear released in 1990 and was on par with the 1983 consoles (NES/SG-1000).

Sega Nomad released in 1995 and was essentially a portable Sega Genesis (1988).

N-Gage released in 2003 and had similar visuals as Saturn/PS1 (1995).

PSP released in 2004 and was pretty just under Dreamcast (1998).

Vita released in 2011 and was somewhere in between 6th gen (00/01) & 7th gen (05/06) consoles so about as powerful as a 2003 home console would have been.

Switch released in 2017 and is somewhere between 7th gen (05/06) & 8th gen (2013) consoles so about as powerful as a 2009/2010 would have been.

Nothing has changed in this regard.