Intel's First Smartphone Arrives

Up till now, smartphone in the market has been based on the same chip technology: the power-efficient designs from UK-based ARM Holdings. But now a new player has finally come to town that is Intel.

Intel's first commercial smartphone has finally arrived. 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. 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. The price of the phone is about $420. It goes on sale on April 23. 

Specifications

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 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.