Intel's Medfield Reference Design Picked up by Russia's MegaFon
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 22, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Intel
- Mobile
- Medfield
Intel has taken a unique approach to getting its Medfield SoC into the hands of customers around the world. After building a competitive, midrange (by today's standards) reference smartphone, Intel allowed its carrier and OEM partners to take this reference phone and sell it under their own brand. We saw the first examples of this approach from Lava with the Xolo X900 and from Orange with the San Diego.
Russian mobile operator MegaFon is joining the list of Medfield reference design customers as it begins selling the Mint smartphone. The chassis should be identical to other smartphones built on the same Medfield reference design. Internally it features a 1.6GHz Atom Z2460 with Intel's XMM 6260 HSPA+ baseband. Just like the other Medfield reference phones the Mint features a 8MP rear facing camera and 4.03-inch 1024 x 600 display.
The MegaFon Mint is priced at 17,990 Rubles (~$550) and goes on sale today. No word on what version of Android will be shipping on the device. Remember that the first Medfield reference phones all ran Android 2.3 with the promise of an ICS upgrade down the road.
Intel has been quiet on the smartphone front since MWC earlier this year. Motorola has an event planned for early next month however that could see the introduction of its first x86 based Android phone.
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Springfield45 - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
It is really too bad that none of the NA carriers have shown excitement for this...tipoo - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
We have Krait for the high end though. With that, I don't feel like we miss much from Medfeild. It was competitive when the first benchmarks were out, but by now it's just ok.Hector2 - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
It's called leapfrog. Intel came out with the 32nm Medfield. Then ARM came out with new technology. Next Intel will be upgrading to 22nm with more features & more integration. It's what Intel & AMD did for years until AMD couldn't keep up.tipoo - Friday, August 24, 2012 - link
So? For now, Krait is still better on the high end, so my point still stands that we aren't missing much until Intel improves.SlyNine - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
Ya, and he's saying soon enough Krait wont be high end. Perfectly valid counter to your point.fic2 - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
It is a rectangle with rounded corners! It looks just like an iPhone!Cue the Apple lawyers in 3, 2, 1...
garadante - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
Except Apple wouldn't dare try and claim patent infringement on Intel. Where would Apple's entire computer lineup be without Intel processors? Apple buys tons of chips from Intel, and Intel caters roadmaps to suit Apple's wants.Omoronovo - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Apple is Samsung's second largest customer in terms of sales volume. In 2010, Apple purchased $5.7 billion of Samsung technologies for use in it's products - mostly flash, LCD panels, and ram, although who knows what else that figure includes.Apple has no more or less to gain from trying to litigate against Intel.
SlyNine - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
You can by LCD's Ram and SSDs from plenty of other vendors.How are you going to replace a core I7 from another company?
dqniel - Sunday, August 26, 2012 - link
Exactly. There is a lot less to choose from in the CPU market than there is in the more "generic" component spectrum.