Intel Medfield Phones Selling Only in Limited Numbers

[Guest]

Intel is reportedly preparing a more aggressive push for its smartphone processor architecture, as demand apparently has been rather limited at this time and vendors apparently believe that the company isn't able to compete with ARM at this time.

Intel Medfield Phones Selling Only in Limited Numbers : Read more

 

[rb420]

I, for one, welcome our new mobile processor overlords.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

^
??

 

[rflynn88]

Intel making SoCs = more competition. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[hoofhearted]

I'd be more interested in hard numbers, specifically, benchmarks.

 

[annymmo]

The 22nm and 14nm generations will be very interesting.

 

[house70]

Hardly anyone ever heard of them. On top of that, the only benchmark available for the San Diego model is not very flattering (against SGS3), but somewhat better than Droid Razr. It needs to be head and shoulders above the competition for people to start paying attention to a new player. There are still no benchmarks available regarding battery life, and the launch with GB instead of ICS pretty much killed it before birth.
I appreciate Intel's desire to get into the game, but they can do waaaay better than this, given their reputation and their financial power. Not to mention the lack of promotion, even worse than WinPhone.

 

[spookyman]

Does it run DROID?

 

[Guest]

house70, anand had tests of battery life and performance. Performance was great. Only 2 ARM based phones were faster, but those 2 also had no where near Intel's battery life. Performance per minute of battery life was definitely in Intel's favor. I think the BG vs. ICS issue is real. Intel just really needs to get more up to date. Get baseband functionality integrated, get to 22nm, and get a dual core version out. That will get people's attention. A single core CPU with old software on an old process is just not going to get anyone excited, even though the performance is excellent and the battery life is good. I see Intel being a player in mid to late 2013 when they have these features.

 

[jayracer7474]

they cant sell any orange's because they're locked bootloader, cant barely even root them

 

[Kraszmyl]

anandtech has a pretty good review for them.

The intel soc even being single core trounces the various dual core arm socs and comes close to the quads. The gpu preformance is alot more varied. Battery was average if i recall correctly.

The intel soc has an arm converter built in if i recall correctly so you can run most non x86 android apps if the built in andriod translator doesnt take care of it already.

All in all its a fairly solid offering and i look forward to seeing what comes out of both companies because of it.

 

[rantoc]

The company's are waiting for windows 8 before this platform takes off, everyone knows this so please spare us the painfully obvious!

 

[house70]

[citation][nom]HeartyApple[/nom]house70, anand had tests of battery life and performance. Performance was great. Only 2 ARM based phones were faster, but those 2 also had no where near Intel's battery life. Performance per minute of battery life was definitely in Intel's favor. I think the BG vs. ICS issue is real. Intel just really needs to get more up to date. Get baseband functionality integrated, get to 22nm, and get a dual core version out. That will get people's attention. A single core CPU with old software on an old process is just not going to get anyone excited, even though the performance is excellent and the battery life is good. I see Intel being a player in mid to late 2013 when they have these features.[/citation]
Will have to look at these benchmarks; still, you seem to agree with a lot of what I said, just put it in different words. Forgot to mention the lack of promotion that is plaguing this platform. If it was promoted more, maybe they would sell more and get a fetter foothold in the market. With an availability on only 3-4 networks in the whole world that's not going to happen. Push the thing across the globe and people will notice it, even if means taking a financial hit - that's why a big company like Intel can afford to do that and they should have taken advantage of it.

 

[xemone]

No one should be surprised. This is a no-brainer. Note to Intel; in order for any Intel smartphone SoC to compete with the superphone chip maker Qualcomm, the said x86 SoC has to at least match the features in the undisputed reigning superphone king aka. Snapdragon MSM8960 Pro S4 SoC. What I mean is integrated multi-mode LTE modem, Wifi, bluetooth, GPS/GLONASS, FM Tx/Rx, killer graphics, et.c and then add a little something on top of that; NFC would be nice.

Take a look at TI's OMAP and NVIDIA's Tegra. Snapdragon-based android smartphones outnumber all the other competitors combined by almost 8:1. Even Samsung used a dual core Snapdragon S4 SoC in the Galaxy S3 rather than their own quad-core Exynos. If these ARM heavyweights are still lagging behind Qualcomm SoCs I doubt Intel's "half-of-what's-required" would even make news.

Device manufacturers are all trying to cut costs while slimming their devices down. If Intel's next x86 smartphone chip doesn't pack everything in like the Snapdragon SoCs do then they clearly don't know or have what it takes!

 

[xemone]

[citation][nom]xemone[/nom]No one should be surprised. This is a no-brainer. Note to Intel; in order for any Intel smartphone SoC to compete with the superphone chip maker Qualcomm, the said x86 SoC has to at least match the features in the undisputed reigning superphone king aka. Snapdragon MSM8960 Pro S4 SoC. What I mean is integrated multi-mode LTE modem, Wifi, bluetooth, GPS/GLONASS, FM Tx/Rx, killer graphics, et.c and then add a little something on top of that; NFC would be nice.Take a look at TI's OMAP and NVIDIA's Tegra. Snapdragon-based android smartphones outnumber all the other competitors combined by almost 8:1. Even Samsung used a dual core Snapdragon S4 SoC in the US Galaxy S3 rather than their own quad-core Exynos. If these ARM heavyweights are still lagging behind Qualcomm SoCs I doubt Intel's "half-of-what's-required" would even make news.Device manufacturers are all trying to cut costs while slimming their devices down. If Intel's next x86 smartphone chip doesn't pack everything in like the Snapdragon SoCs do then they clearly don't know or have what it takes![/citation]

 

[Guest]

Intel Medfield single core but 2 processor threads. not single core! "being single core trounces the various dual core arm socs and comes close to the quads" Please read up on Hyperthreading! Please do not comment on Intel Processors without stating 'with or without Hyperthreading' when you describe the core count. The core i5 on my laptop has 2 cores but 4 processor threads, Via Hyperthreading, and shows up in the task manager as having 4 cores! Intel Medfield in the Xolo 900 has hyperthreading!

http://www.xolo.in/xolo-x900-specifications

 

[ojas]

Well for one, it was a relatively limited and quiet launch and they launched a good enough phone, not a flagship. Probably have to wait on that one.

Also, it's only been a month or two since the phone's launch here in India. Rest of the world's hardly seen it. Sales seem to be picking up here, and their marketing campaign's been picking up. They're sponsoring the Euro telecasts for one, so the ads are pretty frequent.

AnandTech has benchmarks for the Xolo X900, they've had it since april, and ffs it's the same as any other medfield phone.

22nm will be very, very interesting. couldn't come soon enough. I also want to see WP 8 on Medfield, see if it behaves differently.

Interesting side note: Intel teamed up with Lava to make the X900. Now Lava isn't a "brand name", if you know what i mean. Intel's done a smart (clever?) thing, they've distanced themselves from Lava completely. So now it's only Xolo X900 by Intel. Even the website doesn't mention Lava. Can't tell if Xolo's a new company co-founded by Intel and Lava or if it's just a model name.

 

[tacoslave]

i would love to have this in a windows 8 tablet

 

[eddieroolz]

Considering that I see this as a first-generation test product, they're doing okay.

 

[hetneo]

[citation][nom]xemone[/nom]No one should be surprised. This is a no-brainer. Note to Intel; in order for any Intel smartphone SoC to compete with the superphone chip maker Qualcomm, the said x86 SoC has to at least match the features in the undisputed reigning superphone king aka. Snapdragon MSM8960 Pro S4 SoC. What I mean is integrated multi-mode LTE modem, Wifi, bluetooth, GPS/GLONASS, FM Tx/Rx, killer graphics, et.c and then add a little something on top of that; NFC would be nice.Take a look at TI's OMAP and NVIDIA's Tegra. Snapdragon-based android smartphones outnumber all the other competitors combined by almost 8:1. Even Samsung used a dual core Snapdragon S4 SoC in the Galaxy S3 rather than their own quad-core Exynos. If these ARM heavyweights are still lagging behind Qualcomm SoCs I doubt Intel's "half-of-what's-required" would even make news.Device manufacturers are all trying to cut costs while slimming their devices down. If Intel's next x86 smartphone chip doesn't pack everything in like the Snapdragon SoCs do then they clearly don't know or have what it takes![/citation]
Galaxy S III is with Exynos, the international model GT-I9300.

 

[CrArC]

[citation][nom]house70[/nom]Hardly anyone ever heard of them. On top of that, the only benchmark available for the San Diego model is not very flattering (against SGS3), but somewhat better than Droid Razr. It needs to be head and shoulders above the competition for people to start paying attention to a new player. There are still no benchmarks available regarding battery life, and the launch with GB instead of ICS pretty much killed it before birth.I appreciate Intel's desire to get into the game, but they can do waaaay better than this, given their reputation and their financial power. Not to mention the lack of promotion, even worse than WinPhone.[/citation]
Eugh, they launched with GB? Jelly Bean is almost out, what the hell are they thinking?

 

[army_ant7]

I'm imagining a hack to get x86 OS'es on possible future devices. More so with getting programs that run on x86. You'd probably get netbook performance at most though.

 

[Guest]

I would jump for joy if my phone had netbook performance.

My last netbook runs 1080p as a HTPC extender.

 

[Guest]

I find it funny how people want more cpu power in these phones that die in a day of use already. These phones power consumption is about tapped you cant add anymore onto it I dont think they can conserve much more power then they already do. That is the huge limitation of these phones from replacing a PC if your phone is always plugged in why not just use a larger screen and more powerful pc?