Motorola is preparing its first smartphone that will marry Intel’s Medfield chips with Google's Ice Cream Sandwich Android build, according to photos that leaked online.
Motorola's first Android phone to run Ice Cream Sandwich, or
version 4.0, as well as Intel's new Medfield hardware, is more understated than
it is a head-turner, if leaked photos posted by
PocketNow on Feb. 14 prove to
be the real deal.
The Motorola
smartphone is slim and gray, with a button-free, touch-screen-centric face. The
device is said to run an updated version of the MotoBlur user interface and
grab some extra attention with its camera, which reportedly features instant-on
capabilities and 15 frame-per-second burst capture.
The smartphone, the name of which is unknown, is expected to
receive a proper introduction at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona,
Spain, which kicks off Feb. 27.
Motorola,
which has traditionally included Texas Instruments' processors in its
smartphones,
announced
the inking of a new deal with Intel at January's Consumer Electronics Show
(CES). Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha took to the stage
Jan. 10 to announce a multi-year strategic agreement in which Motorola
smartphones will run Intel Atom processors based on the Z2460 platform,
beginning in the second half of 2012.
"We
expect the combination of our companies to break new ground and bring the very
best of computing capabilities to smartphones and tablets," said Otellini,
who's depending on the relationship to keep Intel competing against ARM-based
processors from Qualcomm and others.
Speaking with
Reuters at CES,
ARM
CEO Warren East called the Atom Medfield platform "good enough,"
though hardly a threat to ARM's dominance in the smartphone space.
"[Intel
has] taken some designs that were never meant for
mobile phones, and they've literally wrenched those
designs and put them into a power-performance space which is roughly good
enough for mobile phones," East told Reuters.
East added
that ARM considers Intel a "serious competitor," but doesn't believe
it can ever be a leader in power efficiency.
Also on stage,
Paul Jacobs, CEO of ARM-partner Qualcomm, talked up the Snapdragon chip.
"People
want to do more things with their phones, but battery size remains
constant," said Jacobs. "It's like having a car with a fixed-size
fuel tank, and you want to drive 100 more miles. You've got to make the engine
more efficient. That's what we do for a living."
During the
fourth quarter of 2011, Motorola shipped 5.3 million smartphones, for a 2011
total of 18.7 million smartphones.
Market leader
Samsung, by contrast, shipped 36.5 million smartphones during the quarter and
97.4 million during the full year, while Apple shipped 37 million during the
quarter, by
Strategy
Analytics' count, and 93 million over the year.
Motorola's Jha
has said that, to make better use of marketing dollars, Motorola plans to make
fewer but more differentiated devices.
In
January he told The Verge,
defending Motorola's MotoBlur user interface, "Verizon and AT&T don't
want seven
stock [Android Ice
Cream Sandwich] devices on their shelves," adding that there's no viable
profit in devices that aren't differentiated.
Motorola's
strategy also includes being attentive to international markets. In February
alone, it has introduced its MotoLuxe and Defy Mini smartphones in Germany, two
new tablets in Greece, a white version of the Motorola RAZR in Saudi Arabia and
the Defy Mini in the United Kingdom.
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