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ASUS’ Fonepad has been making its way around the world with a 1.2GHz Intel Atom Z2420 processor and 16GB of built-in storage, but apparently there’s a need for covering one’s face with a beefier version. Announced in Taiwan earlier today, the 7-inch tabletphone will be offered with a faster 1.6GHz Z2460 plus 32GB of memory (with microSD expansion as before). This new model will retail for NT$10,900 locally, which works out to be about US$360; whereas the original model will still be available for NT$8,990 or about US$300 (which is, by the way, a tad more expensive than the UK price). We’ll let you know when ASUS comes back with more information regarding availability in other regions.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, ASUS

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Via: Engadget Chinese

Motorola created quite some buzz with its first “Intel inside” Android phone, the RAZR i, back in September, so it’s only natural to see the company tapping into the Chinese market with a localized variant. Dubbed the RAZR i MT788, this China Mobile device bears much similarity to its Western sibling on paper: 2GHz Intel Atom Z2480, 4.3-inch 960 x 540 AMOLED display (with Gorilla Glass), eight-megapixel camera, microSD expansion (up to 32GB) and Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

The difference? Well, the chassis is the most obvious one: instead of using the same design as the original RAZR i, the new MT788 looks identical to the MSM8625-powered dual-SIM XT788 on China Telecom. On top of that, the battery is rated at just 1,735mAh instead of the RAZR i’s 2,000mAh, and there’s just 4GB of built-in memory instead 16GB; but the front-facing camera’s bumped up from 0.3 megapixels to 1.3. There’s no price just yet, but interested buyers can pick one up in China starting in mid-December. Will the world’s largest carrier help Intel take a significant bite out of the mobile phone market? Only time will tell.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Motorola’s RAZR i MT788 announced with 2GHz Intel chip, heading to China Mobile next month originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 06:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola’s RAZR i has landed on British shores, and is available today from Phones4U. The handset, the first born of a union ‘twixt Moto and Intel, skates pretty close to the competition in the performance stakes and promises vastly improved power efficiency. The handset is free to anyone grabbing a plan costing £21.50 or more, while the first 500 to snap up the phone will also get a complimentary pair of MOTOROKR headphones, too.

Continue reading Motorola’s RAZR i arrives in the UK at Phones4U

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Intel

Motorola’s RAZR i arrives in the UK at Phones4U originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 09:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Chrome for Android browser has been updated to run on x86 processors, meaning Intel Medfield powered smartphones like Motorola’s RAZR i now play nicely with the app. Unveiled earlier this month, and set to go on sale in October, the RAZR i arrived with a few gaps in its software support, most notably the fact that Chrome wasn’t compatible with non-ARM processors.

That’s been fixed now, meaning RAZR i owners will have a choice of browsers when the smartphone hits shelves. It also means that existing Medfield-based phones – such as the Orange San Diego – can now use the app too, and since Intel is hoping to push the Atom chip as much as possible to Android phone and tablet manufacturers, it paves the way for more devices too.

The new Chrome for Android also includes various bugfixes and stability improvements, as well as some fixes to make third-party IMEs work better. It adds YouTube video controls to full-screen playback mode, and videos now continue playing after the phone has been locked and then unlocked.

There’s also location preference integrated at the system level. You can download Chrome for Android from Google Play, and find more on the RAZR i in our full hands-on.

Chrome for Android updated for x86: Plays nicely with Medfield RAZR i is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Intel’s first LTE-capable Medfield smartphone chips are in the pipeline, along with multicore versions of the processor, with the first examples due before the end of 2012. Intel will be “shipping some LTE products later this year and ramping into 2013″ director of product marketing Sumeet Syal told TechCrunch, and in the meantime the company is working on fettling more Android apps to suit the x86 architecture.

That software hiccup could be a headache to Intel and its manufacturer partners, with devices like the freshly announced Motorola RAZR i unable to run certain software available through Google’s Play store. Google’s own Chrome browser, for instance, currently won’t work on the RAZR i, though Motorola has confirmed it should be functional by the time the midrange smartphone actually reaches the market.

“We’re not quoting any numbers” Syal says, “but the majority of all the apps we’ve tested work just fine.” The company’s team responsible for software has been working “constantly round the clock to make sure that all these apps work” and the number of compatible titles increases every day.

As for multicore, initially that will mean dualcore Medfield, with Intel not ready to talk about quadcore Atom processors for phones as yet. Intel, though, is in no great rush Syal insists, content with its hyper threading system that milks two threads out of a single core.

“You have to take a look at how many instructions per clock can the architecture handle — our belief is that others are throwing cores at the issue in terms  of getting more performance.  We make that determination based on our architecture so we felt very comfortable coming out with a single core dual-threaded for our first product, and as we’re able to get more and more performance in the right implementation of the architecture we believe putting in dual-core would be the right thing for our next generation product” Sumeet Syal, Intel

Timelines for the dualcore Medfield versions have not been revealed yet, and nor has Intel disclosed when the first Atom-based smartphones might arrive in the US.

Intel: LTE Medfield by end of 2012 plus dualcore incoming is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.