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San
Francisco: Smartphones and tablets running Intel's chips will enter the
mobile market early next year, posing a challenge to the dominance
of Apple's iPhone and iPad, US media reported Wednesday.
Technology Review, a magazine published by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, said it had tested prototype smartphones
and tablets equipped with Intel's latest mobile chip, dubbed
Medfield. The products run Google's Android mobile operating
system, reported Xinhua.
"We expect products based on these to be announced in the first
half of 2012," Stephen Smith, vice president of Intel's
architecture group, told the magazine.
The prototype products are known as "reference designs" which are
sent out to make a pitch for persuading manufacturers to build
their devices around Intel's technology.
According to Technology Review, the phone prototype was similar in
dimensions to the iPhone 4 but noticeably lighter.
The phone was powerful and pleasing to use, at par with the latest
iPhone and Android handsets. It could play Blu-Ray-quality video
and stream it to a TV if desired; Web browsing was smooth and
fast, said the review.
An outstanding feature of the phone is its camera's "burst mode"
which can capture 10 full-size eight-megapixel images at a rate of
15 per second, it noted.
Intel's tablet, running the latest version of Android system, has
a slightly larger screen than the iPad 2 but is about the same
thickness and weight. The review said a limited trial suggested it
was nicer to use than older tablets based on older versions of
Android.
Intel has tested its reference handset against a handful of the
leading phones on sale today and the tests show that Medfield
offers faster browsing and graphics performance and lower power
consumption than the top three, Smith told Technology Review.
In September, Intel announced a partnership with Google to enable
the Android system to support the world's largest chip maker's
architectures.
Intel has been struggling to get a bite of the booming market of
smartphones and tablets. Most of the current mobile devices use
chips based on architecture from ARM Holdings, which are
considered more power efficient than Intel's products. Nokia had
planned to ship smartphones with Intel chips this year, but it
shifted to ARM-based phones with Windows Phone 7 system.
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