Intel gives us a look at future Medfield devices
In an attempt to transition into the mobile space, desktop chip giant Intel has recently been working on getting their processors into mobile devices. They started by building a chip specially tailored for Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and with the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Google helped them out by making the release compatible with the x86 architecture.
Today we get to see some of the results of those efforts, as Intel has somewhat unofficially revealed its reference designs for smartphones and tablets. Both are based on their Medfield chipset, which is a "System on a Chip" or SoC similar to ARM's offerings. What you see above is the concept smartphone, as no images of the tablet were released.
According to those who were actually able to demo the devices, the chips were plenty fast and powerful-but didn't appear to be dual-core. However, they also had very good battery life, so it is possible that Intel sacrificed cores in favor of hours. The devices also supported both Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, a great sign when phones often release with out of date software.
Even though we have only the promise of great performance and the image above to go on, I already want an Intel powered smartphone. If the Medfield really can deliver power and battery life when running on mobile hardware, our smartphones could soon become even more like micro PCs. We will just have to wait until the projected release in the first half of 2012 to see if this pans out.
[Android Community]
