Intel Medfield Phones Selling Only in Limited Numbers
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.
According to Digitimes, Medfield is currently available in the Xolo 900 phone in India, in the San Diego phone that is sold by Orange across Europe, as well as the Lenovo K800 in China. ZTE will add a device for Chinese market in the second half of this year and Motorola is expected to follow suit over the next few months.
Despite Intel's aggressive approach to drive Medfield into the market, there have been only limited shipments of Intel-based high-end and maisntream smartphones, Digitimes said, and phone vendors are not expecting this situation to change anytime soon. They anticipate that 22 nm and 14 nm version of the SoC may do much better than the current 32 nm Medfield product.
While Intel claims that Medfield is much faster than competing ARM products, it will be an uphill battle to gain footing in a market that has been dominated by ARM products, and in a market that is characterized by existing business relations between ARM processor vendors and handset makers. However, it may be rather common sense that Intel has not leveraged its manufacturing superiority enough to pitch Medfield to phone makers. It may, in fact, take two more processor generations until Intel can establish credibility and vendor connections to be able to succeed.
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
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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.Reply
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. -
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.Reply
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jayracer7474 they cant sell any orange's because they're locked bootloader, cant barely even root themReply -
Kraszmyl anandtech has a pretty good review for them.Reply
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.