Samsung Talking with Nvidia on Galaxy Tab 2?

The Tegra 2 could be in the next Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Having just made its big debut at IFA, the Samsung Galaxy Tab sits poised and ready for Verizon to officially announce its support here in the States (which apparently may be on Thursday). However Samsung is already looking into the future, gearing up for a possible Galaxy Tab 2 in Q2 2011.

The big news surrounding this rumor is that Samsung is in talks with Nvidia to incorporate the Tegra 2 chip. According to a "highly reliable source in Seoul," both companies are in the final stages of negotiations. The current tablet--the Samsung Galaxy Tab--uses Samsung's internally-developed Hummingbird processor. Using Nvidia's chipset could mean that Samsung wants to take on Apple in the mobile gaming sector.

Additional reports indicate that the next Galaxy Tab model will use Google's Android "Honeycomb," the version slated for release after Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) launches in Q4 2010. Hands-on reports stemming from Gingerbread indicate that the updated OS is more of a Froyo upgrade for smartphones, and not tablet oriented. Honeycomb will supposedly be more tablet friendly.

The current Galaxy Tab model uses Android 2.2 (Froyo) even though Google specifically said that this particular build wasn't optimized for tablets. The difference is that--according to Hugo Barra, director of products for mobile at Google--the Samsung Galaxy Tab is more like a big phone than a tablet.

As always, both Samsung and Nvidia refused to comment on rumors.