Up until now, pretty much every smartphone on the market has been based on the same chip technology: the power-efficient designs from U.K.-based ARM Holdings. But look out, because a new player has finally come to town: Intel.
Intel’s first commercial smartphone has finally arrived, but it’s not what you might have expected. Even though the company made a big deal about the Lenovo K800 back in January, its first phone will actually be the Xolo X900, from Lava.
Never heard of Lava? That’s not surprising since it’s a cellphone manufacturer based in India. Lava partnered with Intel to create a special line of smartphones under the Xolo brand, and the X900 is the first product under the banner.
It also happens to be the first phone customers can actually buy to be powered by an Intel Atom Z2460 processor, one of the company’s chips under the Medfield label. It’s a single-core 1.6GHz design (so far Intel only does single-core in mobile) and boasts something called “Hyper Threading Technology,” which aims to improve multi-tasking performance.
The Xolo X900 is an Android phone, running version 2.3 “Gingerbread” but will get an over-the-air upgrade to Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” soon after release. The camera can take 8-megapixel pics, has a burst mode the snaps 10 photos per second, and it captures 1080p HD video as well.
Games and video get a performance boost from the 400MHz graphics processing unit (GPU). The screen measures 4 inches diagonal, and the phone has HSPA+ 21 tech for connecting to 3G networks.
The price of the phone is 22,000 Indian rupees or about $420 (phones tend to cost more overseas where the customer relationship with carriers is somewhat different than in the U.S.). It goes on sale April 23.
What do you think of Intel’s first smartphone? And if you live in India, are you interested in buying it? Let me know in the comments.
