Hasta La Gadget!

Soon after it’s unveiling, the Intel-based RAZR i showed up in Clove‘s listings with a SIM-free price of £342, and now it looks as if a few more outlets are pushing pricing details to the world. Expected to storm the UK in October, the phone should ship to Virgin Media customers for around £23 per month on its Premiere Tariff, while T-Mobilers will be able to score one for £0 to £31 per month depending on the contract. All told, not too shabby for the world’s first 2GHz Atom-backed Android phone, and if you’re eager to push all of this iPhone 5 stuff aside, at least you know precisely how many quid to save up between now and next month.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

UK pricing begins to filter out for Motorola’s Intel-powered RAZR i smartphone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we’ve seen similar things from the RAZR M already — and even reviewed it — we reckoned those 2GHz Intel internals and HSPA-only radio inside the RAZR i (as well as European availability) warranted another tour of the hardware. In summary, there’s decently bright, if a little jaggy, 4.3-inch AMOLED screen, with a water resistant coating covering the already hardy Kevlar backing. There’s space for microSD expansion, and thanks to that tiny bezel, it’s a phone that very happily resided in the palm of our hand. Some Intel assistance has added a new 10-frame burst mode, and also sped up the boot-time of the camera app itself, not forgetting that this RAZR model has a dedicated camera button on the side. We’re booting up our benchmark toolkit to assess how Intel’s processor fares, but until the final scores are revealed, take a look at our hands-on video after the break.

Update: We’ve added our initial benchmarks — check them here.

Continue reading Motorola RAZR i: hands-on with the 2GHz Android phone (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Motorola RAZR i: hands-on with the 2GHz Android phone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 05:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola’s revealed the first smartphone to be borne from its team-up with Intel. Here in London, UK, it’s a familiar-looking Android smartphone with an important internal difference. The RAZR i will be running on one of Intel’s latest mobile chips (2GHz processor), differentiating it from what we saw from the Google-owned phone-maker a few weeks earlier. Motorola’s calling the phone its biggest launch in the UK since the original RAZR.

Motorola’s touting the (almost “edge-to-edge”) 4.3-inch AMOLED display, 2,000mAh of battery and the same Kevlar coating — it’s water repellent this time. But this event is also about Intel’s 2GHz processor inside. The chipmaker says it’s optimized the architecture for web browsing, especially for Java-based activities. It’s also pushing for power consumption even on processor-intensive activities like gaming — but we’ll have to wait for our own tests to check it out.

The RAZR i also packs a similar 8-megapixel camera and interface to those other new Motorola phones, with under a second start-up to get the camera app running — we bet that dedicated camera button helps there. Intel made similar promises with the Orange San Diego, but were already intrigued by that Vanilla-looking interface.

NFC is already baked in, with Android Beam taking control of what you need, while its bootloader arrives unlocked. The RAZR i appears to be packing some iteration of Android 4 — but we’re still checking on whether it’ll be coming with ICS or the newer Jelly Bean. The phone will arrive in the likes of UK, France, Germany and Brazil — but no news on whether it’ll appear inside North America’s borders. In the meantime, you’ll find a galley of pics below, plus a press release and publicity video right after the break.

Update: According to retailer Clove.co.uk stock should be arriving (in the UK at least) on October 1st, with a SIM-free price of £342 (about $555).

Continue reading Motorola announces Intel-powered RAZR i, launches in Europe next month

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Motorola announces Intel-powered RAZR i, launches in Europe next month originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 05:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel has announced that it has completed its work on porting the latest version of Android to operate on smartphones equipped with its Medfield processors. While Intel has finished the work of making Android 4.1 Jelly Bean compatible with smartphones running its processors, the company has no idea when the smartphones will be updated. Updating the operating system on the devices is up to the carriers and manufacturers.

Intel VP and general manager of the mobile computing group Mike Bell said that multiple Intel employees were currently using Medfield smartphones running Android 4.1. Medfield smartphones originally shipped running either Android 2.3 or Android 4.0. According to Bell, the operating system compatible with Medfield processors has been handed off to carriers to put on their phones and will have to go through acceptance testing.

Bell also noted that he can’t announce Android 4.1 testing or deployment on behalf of carriers or device makers. Medfield devices aren’t exactly common on the smartphone market. Intel does have its processors inside some smartphones with Orange, ZTE, Lava International, Lenovo, and Megafon. We talked about the ZTE Grand X IN that runs the Medfield processor previously.

Currently, Medfield processors used in smartphones are single-core Atom chips. There is some expectation that Motorola will announce a smartphone using Medfield chips next week. Currently ARM processors dominate the smartphone market because of their power miserly nature. Intel’s mobile processors are currently considered more power-hungry than comparable ARM offerings. Smartphones with processors that consume more power have less runtime per battery charge, and run time is critical in the smartphone market.

[via PC Advisor]

Intel wraps up Android 4.1 port for Medfield smartphones is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Intel was fast to promise a port of Jelly Bean to Atom-based smartphones. We were left in the dark as to when that port would be ready, but mobile group general manager Mike Bell has put that to rest for PCWorld with news that the Medfield-native Android 4.1 build is both complete and running on Intel workers’ devices — including his. Before dreaming of Google Now searches on an Orange San Diego, though, we’d warn that the usual delays apply. Bell notes that phone makers and the carriers still need go through the lengthy process of signing off on any upgrades. Existing owners will no doubt find it frustrating to be so close and yet so far, although the limbo at least proves that Intel-based hardware isn’t being held back relative to its competition; ARM-running phone manufacturers are in the same boat.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Intel wraps up Jelly Bean port for Atom smartphones, can’t say when devices get it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Sep 2012 22:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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