Back in January, news came in that a NVIDIA Shield Portable refresh was being worked on by NVIDIA. The portable console, which went through the FCC in January, featured upgraded internals, a bigger screen, and an updated Android version powering everything behind the scenes. After over half a year without news of any kind, it's safe to say that the project was shelved. However, Canadian Redditor FwrigginRwootbeer got his hands on a NVIDIA Shield Portable 2 prototype after a trip to his local pawn shop and took to /r/Android and /r/theNvidiaShield to share some information and pictures of the device.

The console, code-named loki_e_wifi, is powered by a NVIDIA Tegra quad-core processor (1.91 GHz A57) which, according to the leaked manual, is a Tegra X1. It's running on a mostly stock build of Android 5.0.1 Lollipop, which means that it's quite an old prototype. It also has 32 GBs of internal storage, 3 GBs of RAM, and a 5.89" 1440x810 screen. The device was probably slated for launch around mid-2015 or early 2016 before it was shelved. Either way, it's truly a collector's jewel, which is probably how it ended up in a pawn shop in the first place.

With the leaked FCC manual, we also know that the device was going to run an Android TV build possibly based on Marshmallow or maybe even Nougat. The console was also capable of outputting at a 1080p resolution at 60fps a la Nintendo Switch (which, by the way, shares a processor with this Shield Portable 2!) However, the 5.89" display size shown on CPU-Z differs with the 5.66" size shown in the manual. Besides the software, the prototype also looks identical to the FCC external pictures. So it appears to be, indeed, a legitimate prototype of the NVIDIA Shield Portable 2.

The lucky owner is on Reddit answering questions about the device and even looking for potential buyers! While the first Shield Portable was arguably a flop due to its sparse game selection and high price, there is indeed a market for a Shield Portable successor, so we hope to see this project being picked up in the near future.


Source: /u/FwriggenRwootbeer on Reddit