Intel's Medfield chip for mobile phones lacks LTE support

Intel’s latest offering to the mobile world is the Medfield x86 chip. The chip, which powers around six phones, doesn’t have support for LTE, according to TechCrunch. This is said to be the main reason that Medfield-based phones haven’t been released in the US yet.

The six phones that run on Medfield are the Motorola RAZR i, the Lenovo K800, the Megafon Mint, the ZTE Grand X IN, the Orange San Diego, and the Lava XOLO X900. The Lava XOLO X900 was launched exclusively in India earlier this year.

The Lava XOLO X900

Here are some of the specifications of the Lava XOLO X900:

• 4.03-inch TFT LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.1, NFC
• 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD recording, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera
• 16GB of internal memory

We first caught a glimpse of the phone back in January during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Lava has priced this phone quite attractively at Rs 22,000. At this price range, the X900 has the Motorola Atrix 2 and the HTC Sensation to answer to so its success or failure all boils down to how good the Atom chip really is and if it can stand up to ARM, a veteran in the mobile phone processor space.

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The highlight of this phone is the new Medfield CPU from Intel, the Z2460. Based on the 32nm fabrication process, the Z2460 SoC features a single core CPU running at 1.6GHz along with the usual Intel features such as HyperThreading and Burst Performance Technology (or TurboBoost). The graphics are taken care of by PowerVR SGX540 GPU, which is clocked at 400MHz. There’s also support for 1080p video playback and recording. Intel is also banking heavily on their new Smart Idle Technology for better battery life than its competitors. This feature allows the CPU core and rest of the processor to switch off while the OS is still functional.

The Lenovo LePhone K800

Lenovo’s Medfield based phone – ‘LePhone’ K800 – was launched back in June. According to Chen Xudong, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group, “As Lenovo’s first smartphone with Intel inside, the launch of LePhone K800 has milestone significance.” Lenovo competes directly with Lava’s XOLO X900 smartphone that also packs in a Medfield based CPU. “LePhone K800 represents an innovative achievement for Lenovo in the PC+ era, as well, a significant progress for Lenovo in smartphone market segment. Lenovo and Intel will continue to intensify their cooperation, integrating respective advantages in technology and resources to introduce more and better products and to explore the new frontier of the mobile Internet together.” Chen added.

Here are some of the highlights of the Lenovo ‘LePhone’ K800:

• 4.5-inch capacity touchscreen display with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS and Wi-Fi capabilities for net access
• GPS with A-GPS support for Google Maps
• Bluetooth with A2DP and USB 2.0 (Micro)
• 8MP camera with LED flash and secondary camera up front
• microSD card support for up to 32GB more memory