Ramos W32 tablet features Intel Medfield CPU, Android 4.0 software

Chinese tablet maker Ramos is preparing to launch one of the first Android tablets featuring an Intel Atom Z2460 Medfield processor. That’s a 1.6 GHz x86 processor with PowerVR SGX540 graphics, which so far we’ve only seen in smartphones, not tablets.

PandaWill is taking pre-orders for the Ramos W32 for $288 and expects it to ship in early January. A number of AliExpress sellers are also taking orders.

The Ramos W32 features a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display with a 170 degree viewing angle (something that’s not always a given on Chinese tablets), 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.

It runs Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich… which is a little behind the times. But the tablet will still be one of the first devices with a Medfield processor to run anything newer than Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

The tablet has a 1.3MP front-facing camera, a 5-point capacitive touchscreen, 802.11n WiFi, a micro USB port, 3.5mm headset jack, and a microSD card slot.

It has a 5400mAh battery which is reportedly good for 6 to 7 hours of battery life.

The Ramos W32 measures 10.2″ 6.5″  x 0.37″ and weighs 1.2 pounds.

They seem to show a tablet with decent performance — while the Intel x86 processor is the tablet’s most unusual feature, odds are most people could pick up the Ramos W32 and use it without realizing it has an Intel chip instead of a mid-level ARM-based processor.

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News : Intel Reveals New Ivy Bridge CPUs for Tablets

Microsoft’s Surface tablet may not be doing as well as the company hoped, but Intel is going full speed ahead on tablet processors. The chip maker intends to release five new Ivy Bridge CPUs for slate computers that feature low power consumption without, one hopes, a hit to performance. They will be available in the first quarter of 2013.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the Surface Pro will also be out in the first quarter. It’s a good bet that these new chips may power that tablet and many other Windows 8 based slates, hybrids, and convertibles.

The new “Mobile Y” chips mostly have the new Core i branding with one lone Pentium in the mix and will clock in at 1.1 - 1.5 GHz. The Core i5 and i7 chips have Turbo Boost ability for overclocking up to 2.6GHz. Good news is that the Core i3, i5, and i7 models get Intel’s HD Graphics 4000.

Overall, these will be much more powerful than the Intel Atom CPU some Windows tablet manufacturers still employ, yet will hopefully get close to that chip’s efficiency.

Long battery life coupled with good performance is the holy grail, especially with tablets. And Intel has some catch up to do in this category when it comes to that balance. New ARM-based chips are on the horizon from Qualcomm, Samsung, and other big players. ARM processors can only run the RT version of Windows, which isn’t all that popular right now.

Intel’s x86 processors support full Windows 8, but apparently tablets with this operating system aren’t exactly flying off the shelf. Issues with the operating system itself aside, getting the performance/efficiency balance right can go a long way toward making tablets people will snatch up without hesitation.

It will be interesting to see the tablet crop that comes out early next year.

via MobileGeeks

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Intel ports Android 4.1 to run on Medfield chips

Chip maker Intel says Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is ready to run on phones and tablets with low power Intel Atom Medfield chips — not that there are all that many of them in the wild yet.

Still, PC World reports that once handset makers and wireless carriers are ready, they’ll be able to update those devices to run the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system.

Xolo X900 Android 2.3 smartphone with Intel Medfield

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean brings improved responsiveness, better text input and voice recognition capabilities, and easier-to-manage home screens, among other things.

Intel is a relative newcomer to the smartphone space. Its Medfield chips are among the first x86 processors from the company which offer the kind of connectivity features and low power consumption we’ve come to expect from ARM-based chips.

Some Android apps may not play well with x86 chips unless they’re ported to run on Intel’s platform. If developers used the Android SDK to code their apps, they should be fine, but some apps developed with the Android NDK may not run unless developers port them to support x86 architecture.

Soon we’ll also see more powerful Atom chips designed for tablets like the HP Envy X2. These new chips, code-named Clover Trail, will offer more PC-like performance along with low power consumption and connected standby mode, letting your laptop or tablet connect to the internet every 15 minutes (or so) to download your latest email messages, social network updates, and other details so that the next time you turn on the device your data will be up to date.

But while Medfield is designed to work with Android (among other operating systems), Clover Trail chips are more powerful, and we’ll likely see them primarily in Windows 8 computers. In other words, the new chips (and computer that use them) will probably hit the streets by the time Windows 8 launches in late October.

via reddit

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News Intel outlines plans for 10W Haswell chips in 2013

Intel’s next-generation chips for notebooks, tablets, and ultrabooks will use even less power than the Ivy Bridge ultra low voltage chips introduced this year. In mid-2013, the first 4-th generation Core processors (code-named Haswell) should hit the market, and they’ll use just 10 to 15 watts of power, or as much as 50 percent less energy than today’s lowest power Ivy Bridge processors.

That could lead to ultrabooks and tablets that get significantly better battery life than models running today’s Core i3 and Core i5 chips.

The BBC reports Haswell chips also offer improved graphics performance as well as better support for speech and facial recognition, among other things.

According to Anandtech’s liveblog from an Intel event in San Francisco, Haswell chips will use 20 times less power when idle than last year’s Sandy Bridge chips. No, I don’t know why Intel isn’t comparing Haswell to this year’s Ivy Bridge processors.

Meanwhile, Intel expects Haswell chips to offer twice as much performance as an Ivy Bridge chip.

Unlike 3rd generation Core (Ivy Bridge) processors, which launched first for high-end notebooks and desktops, Intel will be taking a mobile-first approach when it launches Haswell in 2013. So we’ll see tablet and notebook chips before more powerful desktop versions.

Laptop Magazine shot some video of the Haswell demonstration.

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News : Upcoming @ZTE #GRAND_X will be running on Intel

ZTE Grand X has recently launched, and  today ZTE announced that it will launch the new version of ZTE Grand X will be powered by Intel processors. The new version will be named the ZTE Grand X IN.

ZTE Grand X IN, a new version of the Grand X based on Intel’s processor architecture. Using Intel Atom Z2460 processor. In addition,  It runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 and features a 4.3-inch qHD capacitive touchscreen with a 960×540 pixel resolution.

Meanwhile the Intel XMM 6260 hardware means it can support HSPA+ high-speed data connectivity and a 1,650mAh battery pack keeps things ticking over. Other features include an 8-megapixel primary camera with flash, 1GB of RAM, Micro SD support, NFC, GPS, DLNA, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth.

Until now, there is no information from ZTE about price, availability and whos the OEM manufacturer for this smartphone production.

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News|Intel Atom based smartphones to go on sale starting tomorrow

Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced during a financial earnings call that the company's first Atom based smartphone will go on sale "later this week".

This is not really a surprise because the Indian company Lava, with whom Intel partnered to make Atom based Android phones, has already announced their intentions to launch the Xolo X900 tomorrow, April 19, in India.

Just in case you are not aware of this phone, it has a 4.03-inch display with 1024 x 600 resolution (295 PPI), 8 megapixel rear camera with flash, 10fps burst mode and 1080p video recording, 1.3 megapixel front camera, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage space, HSPA+ connectivity up to 21Mbps, HDMI out and NFC built-in. Unfortunately, the phone will be sold with Android 2.3 Gingerbread at launch.

The Xolo X900 will use Intel's Atom Z2460 processor that has a single-core 1.6GHz Saltwell CPU with Hyper-Threading, PowerVR SGX540 GPU clocked at 400MHz and 32-bit Dual channel LPDDR2 memory. This processor, however, is based on Intel's x86 architecture that differs from the one that ARM uses on almost every other SoC on the market, which means application compatibility is going to be an issue initially.

No price has been mentioned so far for this device although we expect it to be around $500 unlocked, considering Lava's reputation for not being a premium brand.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world will have to wait for now, because even the Lenovo K800 is slated to launch only in China.

Source

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Intel Atom-packing Orange Santa Clara benchmarked

Intel are serious about getting into the mobile phone business with phones like the Orange Santa Clara. The Intel Atom Z2460 chipset however drew some ridicule for its single CPU core.

Early benchmarks show, however, that the single (but HyperThreading-capable) core packs a lot of punch. A lucky CeBIT visitor had a chance to run a couple of browser-based benchmarks, which are easier to access than dedicated apps.

The Santa Clara scored nearly 90K on BrowserMark, beating an iPhone 4S by a slight margin. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which uses the highly-optimized Android 4.0 ICS browser, scores over 100K on this benchmark, but the Santa Clara is still on Gingerbread and should see its scores jump after the planned ICS update.

 
Orange Santa Clara vs. iPhone 4S in BrowserMark

The Intel-based droid also posted some impressive scores on Vellamo. It managed to outpace the Galaxy Nexus and placed behind the quad-core Asus Transformer Prime and the dual-core Xiaomi Mi-One Plus.

  
Santa Clara's Vellamo benchmark

The Orange Santa Clara used for these tests ran Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread and its Atom CPU was reportedly clocked at 1.4GHz. Browser-based benchmarks are not the best at pushing several CPUs to their limit (and much less when it comes to the GPU), but these are pretty encouraging results, especially with a dual-core Atom chipset on the way.

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News : Intel announce two new Atom CPUs for phones and tablets

Intel is serious about getting a piece of the handheld action this time - they announced two new processors and chipsets to join what's already powering the likes of the Lenovo K800 and the Orange Santa Clara.

The first processor is called Atom Z2580 and features two cores (the same Medfield design like the fist one) with HyperThreading allowing the processor to run four threads simultaneously. It will be clocked at 1.3GHz, potentially going up to 1.8GHz with Turbo Boosts.

It's paired with a powerful GPU too - PowerVR SGX544MP2, which is supposed to double the performance of an SGX543MP2 found in the iPhone 4S.

Intel have their own LTE-capable modem that will work with the Atom Z2580 and all these components will be shown off in a brand new reference design.

With a little luck, it will go the way of the Santa Clara and be offered as a consumer phone too. However, that's unlikely to happen before the first half of 2013 at the earliest .

The second chipset includes the Atom Z2000, a low-end single-core processor running at 1GHz and without HyperThreading. There's a downclocked SGX540 GPU and an Intel-made HSPA+ modem.

The Atom Z2000 will get its own reference design and will target low-end phones. There's no word on availability, but probably won't be soon either.

Source

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Intel's Medfield series processor debuts on the Lenovo K800

Intel has been trying to get into the smartphone segment for a long time now but they have finally managed to do it with the Lenovo K800, which will be the first smartphone to hit the market running on Intel's 32nm Medfield platform.

The K800 is running on the Penwell SoC that has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2460 CPU with 512KB L2 cache. On the GPU side it has the tried and tested PowerVR SGX 540 which has been clocked at a slightly higher than usual 400MHz and dual-channel LPDDR2 memory. The CPU in Penwell is only a single-core right now but Intel plans to come up with dual-core versions later, along with a faster GPU.

So how does this new chip perform? Quite well, actually. Despite the single-core CPU and the fact that the K800 was running on Gingerbread, the Intel chip managed to race past phones like the Galaxy Nexus running ICS and the iPhone 4S in the browser benchmarks. GPU benchmarks, admittedly, weren't as impressive, although it is powerful enough to decode and encode 1080p30 video.

But what about power consumption, you ask? Luckily, Intel has taken care of that as well. Compared to phones like the iPhone 4S, Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation and the LG Optimus 2x, the Intel reference handset managed to consume the least amount of power in certain tasks while being significantly lower in some of the others.

It is important to note, however, that despite the impressive CPU performance and lower power consumption, the Medfield processor is up against rivals that came out last year and are soon to be upgraded. It remains to be seen how well it stacks up against the Cortex A15 and the Qualcomm Krait when they release later this year.

Intel has managed to partner with two companies for now, one of which is Lenovo and the other is Motorola. Lenovo plans to launch the K800 in China by Q2 this year although the Motorola smartphones and tablets running Medfield will only arrive by the end of this year.

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