First Moorestown smartphone announced, the LG GW990
In development for a few years now, Intel's Moorestown platform should finally be arriving around the middle of this year. As its candidate to take on the ARM-dominated smartphone market, Intel has a lot riding on Moorestown and the Linux-based Moblin platform. Hence it was with great interest at CES a couple of days ago that Intel and LG officially announced the first product using the Moorestown platform, the LG GW990 smartphone. It was rumored last year that the two companies were collaborating on an MID phone and it looks like the GW990 is the result of that partnership.
Final specifications have not been released but the currently known details are that it will use the very energy efficient Moorestown CPU, run Moblin, feature a 4.8-inch 1020×480 panoramic touch screen, have 512MB of RAM and 16GB of local storage with support for microSD, and include WiFi, 3G, aGPS, a digital compass, and a 5MP camera. The device is also said to be capable of outputting HD 720p video and 3D gaming. There wasn't any mention of the battery life we can expect, but the battery is known to be a 1850mAh unit.
The unit on display at CES had a preliminary UI based on LG's S-class interface, but the company has stated it intends to have a variety of OS options when the device launches. Reports state that the handset was demonstrated to be very responsive and capable of handling complex multitasking. A multi-window view in both landscape and portrait orientations was also shown with multiple applications running.
I have been following the development of Moorestown and am intrigued by its possibilities and the implications in the smartphone/MID space over the coming year. The new LG GW990 is a very positive step for the new platform and brings some interesting things to the table. The hardware features look promising, and I am very curious about the performance and battery life we can expect. I am also interested to see what we can expect from Moblin in comparison to Android and Maemo.
But, as expected the device is very large for a smartphone, with an awkward tall/wide shape accommodating the impressive panoramic screen. It seems to be approaching the size of devices such as the xpPhone rather than existing smartphones. After looking at Jenn's HTC HD2 size comparisons gallery, I have to admit that I think phones shouldn't be larger than devices like the HD2, Nexus One and XPERIA X10. But nevertheless, I am excited by the thought of the LG GW990 joining the smartphone fray in the second half of this year.
What are your thoughts on this new device and on the Moorestown platform in general? Will Intel be able to get a slice of the pie off ARM? Head over to Engadget for more images of the GW990 and a short video of the device in action which I have also included below.
