CES 2012 Roll-Up: HH Features From CES

Name: CES 2012 Roll-Up: HH Features From CES - Page 5
Brand: CES

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 09:00 AM EDT

After years of work and a few false starts, Intel is finally ready to take the plunge into the smartphone market. At the CES keynote tonight, the CPU giant is officially launching Medfield, the 32nm smartphone SoC the company has built to take it into the next generation of smartphones (and a few tablets). The chip, now officially named the Atom Z2460, is ready for prime time.

We visited Intel HQ in December and were briefed on the next-generation phone and what Intel expects it to do. After Moorestown's disappointing performance in the space, the CPU giant is keen to put its best foot forward, and our time with the company reflected that. Intel isn't trying to position Medfield as an ARM-crusher, but as a solution that's more than capable of running with the current pack of hardware.

The phone, in-hand. This shot gives a much better demonstration of its size.

Unlike Moorestown, which debuted with a bang, an LG-designed phone, and went nowhere thereafter, Medfield has solid design wins behind it, by which we mean products that will definitely be coming to market. Motorola and Lenovo are both announcing products today. Lenovo has its K800, a device intended for the Chinese market and sold by China Unicom, while Motorola has announced a multi-part deal with Intel for smartphone and tablets.

Details are still a bit sketchy on Moto's hardware, but the company expects to ship phones by this summer, with a tablet following later. These announcements aren't likely to be isolated events, either; we're likely to hear about more products at Mobile World Congress next month.

So what's inside the new chip? Let's have a look.

Tags: Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Samsung, ViewSonic, ces2012

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com