Motorola Hits 2GHz with Intel Powered RAZR i
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 18, 2012 5:30 AM ESTAt the beginning of this year Intel finally unveiled its Atom Z2460 (Medfield) smartphone platform. The single-core, dual-thread CPU ran at up to 1.6GHz and was paired with a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU from Imagination Technologies.
Most of the first Z2460 smartphones announced simply leveraged Intel's Medfield Form Factor Reference Design (FFRD). This approach guaranteed minimal risk for the device vendor, while introducing a completely new way to address the market for Intel. If the typical device markers weren't biting at the opportunity to ship an Intel phone, Intel would simply build its own and sell it directly to carriers and others who wanted it.
The major exception was Motorola. At CES this year Motorola announced it would be building smartphones and tablets based on Intel's Atom silicon, with the first devices appearing in the second half of 2012.
We're well into the second half, and at a special event today in London the two companies announced the first fruits of their labor: the Motorola RAZR i.
If the device pictured above looks familiar to you it's because the RAZR i is very similar to the Droid RAZR M that was just announced a couple of weeks ago in NYC. The same 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED Advanced display is present on the front, and you get the same Dupont Kevlar around back. What's new is the silicon inside: a combination of Intel's Atom Z2460 and XMM6260 baseband drive the RAZR i.
At Mobile World Congress Intel announced the Z2460 would be able to run its CPU core at up to 2GHz, up from the 1.6GHz announced at CES. Since then, no Intel based phones have used the new 2GHz silicon. The Motorla RAZR i is the first. I believe this also makes the RAZR i the first Android smartphone to hit 2GHz in its default configuration, without overclocking. Admittedly the Z2460's base clock remains 1.3GHz, it's only when the thermal conditions allow it that the CPU will boost up to 2GHz. Frequency isn't everything of course, but it's interesting to see Intel at the forefront of ramping it in the smartphone space.
The rest of the specs should be identical (or very similar) to the Droid RAZR M. Obviously LTE support is out given the Intel HSPA+ baseband.
The RAZR i runs Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) although Google/Mototorla/Intel are committed to delivering 4.1 (Jelly Bean) as an upgrade at some point.
While the RAZR i isn't the flagship device Intel needs, it's another step in the right direction. The first devices will ship in October to select European and Latin American markets, including the UK, France, Germany, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Unlike the Droid RAZR M, the RAZR i will only be available in black.
One of these days we'll see a US-focused Intel smartphone, although I suspect that won't happen until next year.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
32 Comments
View All Comments
Lucian Armasu - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
2.2 Ghz quad core i7*Hector2 - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
According to CNET, Motorola's RAZR i with Intel's chip is essentially the same phone as their recently announced RAZR M for Verizon with Qualcomm inside.Moto says the Intel version battery life is a little bit better than the Qualcomm version. In the end, it comes down to benchmarks and data, not marketing.
It'll be interesting to see how these 2 stack up against each other and I'm looking forward to Anand's in-depth reviews
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57514407-94/motor...
1008anan - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
Will Intel ever include graphics faster than the PowerVR 540 in Medfield? Or will faster graphics have to wait for 22 nm Atom Z?UpSpin - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5592/intel-atom-z258...Intel Atom Z2580: PowerVR SGX 544MP2 @ 32nm
Lucian Armasu - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
The graphics performance seems to be beaten by a significant margin even by the Adreno 225:http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/motorolas-razr-...
hyvonen - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
You're looking at the wrong chip - Z2580 isn't benched yettwotwotwo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
On this, a friend noted hardware image stabilization was in the Haswell graphics tech, and that seems like a feature that's really for phones (maybe it'd have some use in a tablet).AnandTech guys have any info or speculation about when Intel will put their own graphics, or _something_ well matched to other future SoCs, in their phone chips?
(Or is a 544MP2 still pretty hot? It would've been at one time.)
fic2 - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
And here I thought from the Motorola layoff announcement that Motorola was going to be making less phones. To make a new Razr just to put an intel processor/sticker on it seems to say that they are still going to be making 27 versions of the same phone.pookguy88 - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
Anyone know what frequencies this will have? I'm especially interested in AWS (T-Mobile USA). Would be great if it were Pentaband... but one can only hope.feur - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
Razr i posts a 50% increase in egypt classic over older z2460 phones, that would equate to a 200 mhz increase in gpu clock (to ~600mhz). Wouldn't be very power efficient to clock it that high.It's likely using a different gpu, possibly sgx544. There are reports of a z2480 SoC, which would make sense. z2480 could be a z2580 with CPU0 fused off, and the 544mp's at a lower clock.