We’re still seeing a good mix of single-core and dual-core smartphones – and likely will continue to – but there’s no denying that dual-core has firmly arrived on the smartphone scene. Before this first wave of dual-core phones even hit us, though, we were hearing about the next generation of mobile processors, promising quad-core technology. NVIDIA demoed its Tegra 3 “Kal-el” chips at the Mobile World Congress back in February, giving us an early taste of what to expect from this kind of processing power. Since then, we’ve seen some more demos, making us anxious for when we would finally see these chips in retail smartphones. NVIDIA had said that it was planning to get Kal-el into some tablets as early as sometime this month, with quad-core smartphones following before the end of the year. Sadly, NVIDIA has confirmed that its schedule has slid back a bit.

According to the company, it won’t be until the fall that we get to see Kal-el-powered Android tablets arrive. Consequentially, the first use of the chips in smartphones will be pushed back as well; expect the first to become available around the time of CES 2012. It’s only a wait of an extra few months, but we’re still bummed.

Source: Android and Me