It looks like we missed out on an Nvidia SHIELD Portable 2. The unreleased device was submitted to the FCC for regulatory certification last year with a 180-day confidentiality request. Those 180 days are now up, so the device has surfaced on the FCC website — but is unlikely to ever surface in stores.
The Portable 2 seems to have a slightly different design than the original device, which is basically a tablet connected to a controller for mobile gaming, especially when it comes to the button clusters. With the shell closed, however, it looks almost identical. The display also seems to be slightly larger than the original thanks to smaller bezels.
It’s not known what kind of specs the device would have packed under the hood, but it’s likely we would have seen an updated Tegra X1 processor. The listing also confirms that the device would have been compatible with 5GHz Wi-Fi and had support for Bluetooth Low Energy. It also would have had a microSD card slot, a headphone jack, and what appears to be a HDMI port.
The device was never officially released, and now that the 180-day confidentiality request is up, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see it on store shelves. Nvidia just launched the SHIELD Android TV device — and it’s possible that the company ditched development of the SHIELD Portable 2 in favor of creating an Android TV streaming device. The SHIELD Portable 2 would have also been a niche product — a nice one, to be sure, but still a niche product.
Still, it is possible that the company simply shelved it for a later date. Perhaps we’ll end up seeing a release at Mobile World Congress or at a later date, but given Nvidia’s recent commitment to the Android TV platform, we would be surprised to see that happen.
