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Lava Xolo X900 Review - The First Intel Medfield Phoneby Brian Klug on 4/25/2012 6:00 AM EST
106 Comments
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iwod - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkSince Phone Maker can just buy a reference design from ARM, and all other parts, then Fab them with TSMC, the only cost is a Engineering Team and Fab Cost. For Phone Maker with Large Volume, The Total cost of SoC is much cheaper then say buying from Nvidia.
SoC Margin is much smaller then what they used to get with Desktop and Laptop Chip. So unless Intel's smartphone SoC is MUCH faster, otherwise there just aren't any incentive of changing over. Reply
ExarKun333 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI doubt you know the exact pricing of all the options. If NV and Intel were not competitive competitive price-wise, they wouldn't be in the market... Reply
fm123 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkNot necessarily true. Since Intel could be using it as a loss leader to take marketshare even at 0 profit. The desktop non-SoC Atom pricing starts around $40 (based on their pricelist), while something like Tegra2 is in the below $20 and Tegra3 supposedly in the $20's.
Intel can throw lots of money at this and not make any for quite a while. Since part of the plan was likely to create a reference design anyone could sell, that is apparently what they are doing. Reply
UltraTech79 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkNone of what you said made "If NV and Intel were not competitive competitive price-wise, they wouldn't be in the market..." an untrue statement. Reply
fm123 - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkIf Intel "sells" for little to no profit, then it could be price competitive for the people buying it. Nvidia has to make some profit, because they are far smaller with less bank account than Intel. Intel's own current pricing of Atom shows they are way out there based on their current operating margins, but again that's not their initial goal anyway.
Given that Intel had to spend lots to develop the reference design and port Android, they clearly invested massive R&D into the project. They have offered this service to anyone wanting to sell the phone without extra cost, you can't take an Nvidia reference and sell it as they don't do final designs and software. So they don't care about the time schedule as long as they can get marketshare, but they offer a fully manufacturable product, just like GPU reference design boards AMD and Nvidia offer.
This was the argument I always brought up, Intel has a specific margin range they sell at. Mobile products are lower margin than they would prefer, but they need to take away market share from competition, it's similar to getting greater margins. Reply
kuroxp - Monday, May 21, 2012 - linkAfter that big EU fine, I'd be surprised if Intel sold their stuff below cost.... Reply
Lucian Armasu - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkCould they be doing price dumping? Either way, check this out:
"Intel's Oak Trail platform, paired Atom Z670 CPU (US$75) with SM35 chipsets (US$20) for tablet PC machine, is priced at US$95, already accounting for about 40% of the total cost of a tablet PC, even with a 70-80% discount, the platform is still far less attractive than Nvidia's Tegra 2 at around US$20."
The CPU from Xolo is from the same Z class, so it should cost about the same, especially with it being newer and all. Reply
B3an - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkIt's too thick, average performance, average battery and dont compare to Krait / A15 ARM SoC's which was really needed being as A9 is old news. But atleast it's a reasonable attempt this time. Unlike all other failed Intel attempts in this area. So quite good-ish news for Win 8 tablets...
I just hope the dual core version for Win 8 tablets is clocked considerably higher because i'll be get a Win 8 tablet but the question is which one, and i'd like it to have good performance compared to ARM based alternatives because i'd like to run x86 software, but if the WinRT ARM alternatives are better by a large margin it might be enough to make me forget about x86. Reply
Latzara - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkToo thick - it's thicker than the ones it's compared with here - but calling 1.1 cm 'Too thick' compared to 0.95 or similar is preposterous cause it basically feels the same in your hand and usage wise it's no different Reply
B3an - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThats purely your opinion and i'm sure you're a minority. Many people are not even going to consider this because of it's thickness.
When compared to nearly all other phones of similar performance/spec that have come out in 2012 this phone is likely thicker than atleast 98% of them. Even most phones from 2011 were often thinner. And it might be slight difference but it's easy to feel and see. Reply
Spunjji - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link...so, suddenly it becomes more than mere opinion when you say the opposite? You have to admit you're on shaky ground with that line of argument.
"Could benefit from being thinner" isn't quite the same as "too thick". I suspect you mean the former? Reply
UltraTech79 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkIts not an opinion when its true. Phones should stay below 1CM thickness, and even 1CM is pretty beefy. Many people will not consider it due to this and not having a real huge advantage anywhere else.
When all else is roughly the same, comfort and aesthetics decide a buy. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link1 cm is *way* too thin for anyone with "normal"-sized hands.
Compare the aesthetics of holding/using a cordless phone, an office phone, a corded-phone, basically any phone handset other than a cell phone to a cell phone. Which feels more comfortable in your hand to speak into for more than 3 seconds? The one that fits nicely in the palm of your hand, that nicely curves with the natural lines of your hand (aka everything other than a cell)? Or the one with sharp edges, barely 1 cm thick, that requires you to use the muscles in the sides of your hands to grip, leading to cramping if you actually try to, you know, talk, on the phone?
Today's cell phones are too thin, and battery life is suffering for it. Reply
fm123 - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkDefinitely an opinion. If someone wants a keyboard it's going to be over 1 cm. There are people that put their phone in cases and the result is way over 1 cm. The Otterbox Defender is somewhat popular, and the phone becomes almost 3/4 inch thick. Reply
FrederickL - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
On the general issue of "phone-thinness" rather than this phone in particular no doubt the same people who want the mobile equivalent of an anorexic catwalk model will then start howling about the battery life in their super-thin phone where there is scarcely room for a battery at all, let alone one with decent capacity. Perhaps we should be discussing the fact that some customers' contradictory "want my cake and eat it" demands indicate that the topic should be that some of the customers are too thick rather than the phones. Reply
mrtanner70 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI find the "a bigger battery is all we need" argument rather weird in the context of the thickness. It's not like Intel has not already considered this trade off. It's lighter than I expected though.
The trouble with reviews like this (and this is not a criticism) is that SOC price is not considered, nor that fact that the mobile industry really would rather Intel, and its monopolistic/margin desires, stay away. Benchmarks (unless paradigm breaking) are not going to change that.
So far, I do not believe Intel has a single true design win, they paid for them all. Reply
menting - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkprofit margins for ARM and Intel as a whole company, if this page can be believed, are similar
http://ycharts.com/companies/ARMH/profit_margin#se... Reply
menting - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkwe dont know what that phone will cost in the US, but for a phone that costs $420 with that performance???? ARM will be pissing in their pants right now if it had the performance of A15 on that phone. Reply
duploxxx - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkKnowing that it can't keep up against already existing platforms introduced a while ago it is a failure. Don't see any reason why to buy this mobile phone, it doesn't have any added value against any other major competitor.
not on price/power/performance.
so it is doomed before it is even released.
lets see what the tablet brings, but it doesn't look good at all. It all starts with the Atom which has never proven to be a good arch..... Reply
A5 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkFor a first attempt (Moorestown was always going to fail, so I don't count it :P) it really isn't that bad. It pretty handily beats the A9-class SoCs from last year while being somewhat competitive with the S4 running ICS. I'm curious to see if the Medfield ICS build gets better performance.
I don't know how much Medfield phones will cost, but if it comes over here as a $420 off-contract device, that places it pretty firmly in the mid-range, where it would certainly be pretty competitive with the A9 devices that will be down there. Reply
Splynn - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - linkI'm curious as to if there will be cost saving in the software development side of a tablet or phone. Intel is very good at developing platforms at this point that have a consistency from a software point of view (for example, PCIe works like a super set of PCI from a software point of view which was a big factor in its adoption).
If this saves enough on the cost of development and maintaining the software, then it would seem to be a good option. But it would be a new way of doing business for the embedded market. Reply
djgandy - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkNot a bad attempt, sure there are better SoC's out there but considering the age of the current Atom architecture and how it began it's not faring too badly. Medfield is a pretty old chip in terms of design. I'd expect Intel to start tick-tocking with Atom soon Reply
name99 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkThe whole POINT is that Intel probably can't spin this as fast as ARM can. That has always been the more intelligent argument against Intel in this space-not that x86 is too large or too power hungry, but that it is so so so much more painful to design and validate, but any attempt to cut corners has the potential for embarrassing bugs like the pentium FPU bug. Reply
therealnickdanger - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI wonder how much better this phone would do with ICS loaded instead of GB? Will AT give this phone an update when the official ROM is released?
Please forgive my ignorance - you could load Windows XP or Windows 7 on this thing, correct? Dual boot? Is there hardware that would restrict one from doing so? Seems to me that if it's just a glorified X86 Atom, it could be done. Arguments about drivers, battery life, and overall functionality aside...
I'll keep watch over at XDA... Reply
S20802 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkHow would it be with Win7 SE? Pretty Cool for fun. Reply
Rick83 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThere might be some issues with Windows, as it probably expects some desktop hardware, such as PCI or PCIe buses.
While the CPU is x86 (x64 supposedly), the systems is not necessarily what you'd call "PC-compatible".
Plus, the boot-loader is probably locked tightly.
It would be interesting to see how Windows 8 positions itself though. With the mobile version now being called Windows for ARM, I'm wondering if the normal version will run on the reduced platform that mobile Atom offers. Reply
superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkWindows 8 can run on x86 SOC with LPDDR2 and no PCI/PCIe buses ( http://phil-it.org/chris/?p=1179 ). This phone can't run windows 8 though because it doesn't have any DirectX 9_3 compatible GPU. Now if anyone started selling phones with Z2580 (it uses PowerVR SGX544MP2 that can run DirectX 9_3) than it's all fair game (provided we can tinker with the BIOS and bootloader). Reply
IcePhase - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkDoesn't Windows 8 also require a 768p screen? Reply
superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkyes if you want to run metro apps. if you only use the desktop than it's all good (tried this myself with HP mini note with the exact same resolution as this phone, pathetic i know...). for benchmarking though desktop is all we need. if you want to use it as a phone though than it's going to be tough (to say the least). Reply
superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkyes if you want to run metro apps. if you only use the desktop than it's all good (tried this myself with HP mini note with the exact same resolution as this phone, pathetic i know...). for benchmarking though desktop is all we need. if you want to use it as a phone though than it's going to be tough (to say the least). Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI doubt windows would expect PCI channels lol. Though, it might need drivers to operate.
Everything you need is on the phone for windows to operate (Screen, CPU, Video, RAM and Disk space) exists, even though Windows doesn't require it all. Though, Windows does need some way to communicate with those devices (device drivers), which Win7/etc probably doesn't have. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkA few years from now it is likely I might be able to acquire one of these for dirt cheap. (Broken screen, etc) I would use it just for an ultra low power ultra low profile *single-function* pc. I would very much like to know if this hardware can run windows 7. It doesnt need to run well, it just needs to be able to go on the web and do basic things similar to an atom nettop. Reply
superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkit won't run windows 7. unlike windows 8, windows 7 requires standard RAM not LPDDR. windows 7 also requires some form of PCI. Reply
Musafir_86 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link-Excuse me, but IMHO, the type of physical RAM shouldn't matter. If not, we couldn't be able to load these OSes on VMs at all. :)
Regards. Reply
B3an - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkWhy would you even want to run Win 7 on this when Win 8 would clearly be WAY better suited, not to mention it also uses less resources and RAM while remaining faster/snappier than 7. Reply
rahvin - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkI'd imagine he wants to know because Windows 8 is going to be only slightly less successful than Vista. Personally I'd guess around 5% of the Vista sales. It's a disaster in waiting unless they make dramatic last minute changes. You should try using it. Reply
joshv - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI am not sure why this chipset matters. Intel usually wins on x86 compatibility with older software. In the phone space there is no existing x86 code, and in fact they are stuck emulating another ABI - so they will be slower and less efficient that competitors that implement that ABI natively.
That leaves Intel to compete on price/performance alone in a market where their competitors have 99.9% of the market. An odd position for Intel.
Perhaps this makes more sense in a Windows 8 tablet? Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkIts netbooks all over again, on a much bigger scale. ARM is moving upscale, if Intel doesn't start competing directly they will eventually start ceding some existing market share (when tablets/laptops start to overlap more, and the writing's on the wall with Windows for ARM).
Only difference is they're up against a capable rival(s) as opposed to a limping AMD, so they can't just come out of the gate strong and them dog it and let the lower end market stagnate in order to maintain profits.
This is a small first step but it'll allow them to ink more deals and possibly cement a strong foundation for upcoming Win8 ARM tablets which is probably their bigger long term concern. Reply
dcollins - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkDid you even read the article?
The x86 vs ARM issue is mostly a non-issue that will be completely resolved within a few months. Dalvik apps are JIT compiled to ARM and x86 and will perform similarly. In fact Intel might have an advantage here because they have the best compiler engineers in the world with decades of experience in generating high performance x86 code. NDK apps will generally be supported natively; developers only have to check a box to include x86 binaries. Even Apps that aren't compiled with x86 support are translated prior to installation on the users device. Nothing about the instruction set makes Medfield slower than ARM.
Performance today is comparable to modern ARM processors even when running an out of date, slower OS. Performance in 4.0.x should match or outperform even Krait. Graphics performance is middle of the road, but that's a major concern for many smartphone buyers (myself included). Even in benchmarks that purposefully stress mutliple cores, Medfield holds its own against the many cored competitors. Real world usage is more lightly threaded.
Browser performance is the most important metric for my usage and here Intel performs extremely well. If Medfield is available in a 4.x phone when it comes time for me to upgrade, I will seriously consider it versus a Krait based offering. Now imagine a next generation Atom build on 22nm with dual core, hyperthreading and possibly OoO execution: that chip will eat A15s for breakfast. Reply
dcollins - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkedit: "Graphics performances... is NOT a major concern" Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkLooks like Krait still has a significant lead over Intels competitor, and it was shipping sooner. Intels doesn't have better CPU performance, GPU performance, or battery life, it's just ok at everything. I think their advantage will no doubt grow with 22nm, but for now we finally see Intel entering some stiff CPU competition, even if its for the low power draw segment. Reply
Lucian Armasu - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThat's the question: why would manufacturers care? Just because it's Intel? And why would they want to repeat the PC situation where they got an Intel lock-in, when there's much better competition with ARM makers, and they can get the chips for a much cheaper price (which Brian didn't take into account in this review). Reply
haar - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link<strong> But, can it play Crysis? </strong>. ROFLMAO! (sorry, first and last time i will use this... but really it is a perfect line imao) Reply
y2kBug - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkIt seems that Intel put a lot efforts to make Android run on x86. Even if I think that this will not bring Intel any money in return; here is an idea how to make these efforts not to die in vain. Make this runtime work on Windows, so that we can run Android apps on the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. This will make upcoming Windows 8 tablets so much more useful from the very start. Reply
superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkYouWave ( http://youwave.com/ ) and BlueStack ( http://bluestacks.com/ ) can already do that on windows 7 right now. BlueStack has shown that it can run android apps on windows 8 PC (it just doesn't have live tiles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKAOkpX7Q2E ). Reply
aegisofrime - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkAm I the only one who can't wait for an Android phone rocking ULV Haswell? That is gonna be such a beast. Modern in-order architecture + hopefully decent GPU. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkYeah, Atom is quite an old architecture now in chip terms, a redesign could bring Intel back up in a huge way. While I was disappointed by this SoC, bearing in mind how old it is and its competing against new designs like Krait, I guess they could do much much better with a real new Atom. Reply
Khato - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkWhereas my guess is that we'll be seeing conroe-class performance out of the silvermont cores in Medfield's successor. Hence why I couldn't help but chuckle at the second to last line in the review, "What I'm waiting for is that Conroe moment, but in a smartphone." Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkConroe class performance would certainly bring these devices up to "good enough" territory. But current Atoms are only a fraction that performance still. We'll have to wait and see I guess. Reply
B3an - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkYou're both idiots if you think Intel could get Conroe class or vastly better Atom performance out of 32 or 22nm.
The whole reason Intel have used the 'old' Atom design in the first place is because it's simple and small, which means lower transistor count, smaller die, and lower power consumptions. If you honestly think they could have got Conroe level complexity or performance in a phone SoC with anywhere near acceptable power consumption and die size, even at 22nm, then you're both living in a fantasy universe. Reply
superPC - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkWell this atom only has 1/4 of conroe dual core transistor count right now. a move to 22nm could bring conroe level performance. Reply
Khato - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkRemember, conroe class performance simply indicates a general IPC level. I don't expect something on par with an E8600, more like a SU9600. It's quite feasible on the 22nm LP process, and actually is roughly in-line with the one Atom performance roadmap from awhile ago. Reply
extide - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThat wont be happening for a while, but from what I have heard 2013 will bring us a second gen (out-of-order) atom on a mature 22nm process. We should see 2Ghz+ clockspeeds and 2 cores, plus a healthy IPC boost. This is going to be an exciting battle to watch, the old Intel vs AMD gig is kind of stale, so its awesome to see a real challenge for Intel again! Reply
A5 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkULV Haswell will have a TDP an order of magnitude too high for a phone form factor. Tablets, maybe. Reply
MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link"We waited years for Intel's first smartphone, now the question is how long do we have to wait for the first irresistable one?"
It wont matter. Intel will dump millions into advertising, and every single phone maker will have ads for their new x86 phones, ending with the usual Intel chorus. Reply
dougys - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI read somewhere else a few weeks back that the iPhone 5 could have Intel Inside. However, something else I read suggested that if they were to do this all the apps would have to be re-written... Does anyone have any thoughts/insight? Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkApple has a few architecture changes under its belt, but I very much doubt it, not for this chip. Apple bought chip design companies and spends more on internal chip design year after year for good reason.
Not sure about iOS compatibility but this chip can run any Android apps just fine as the article points out through binary translation, I think Android apps use Java and iOS uses C++ though so I'm not sure if that would still work.
If Apple was to go to an outside design for its chips (which I highly doubt it will) I'd hope it would be for Qualcomm, Krait is amazing. Reply
dcollins - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkApple will not move to an Intel chip anytime soon because they have been very successful in designing their own SoC. Just look at the battery life benchmarks: Apple crushes everyone in Hours/Watt*Hour. Plus, doing it in house gives them more flexibility on the overall design of their boards.
There is a small chance of Intel manufacturing chips for Apple, but that is a long shot as well. Chips manufactured on Intel's 22nm 3d gate process would be incompatible with chips produced on competing 28nm processes (different physical size) and Apple is traditionally opposed to single sourcing crucial components. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkWhy does the GN get worse flash performance than the Nexus S and even Nexus One? That isn't a resolution dependant test, right?
I'm also curious why the dual core Atrix barely does better than the single core Nexus S in Vellamo, was that just a bad SoC design or is it because it runs an older OS? Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI also just got 915 on my Nexus S rather than 622, but I'm using an unofficial Cyanogenmod 9 build from XDA forums. Reply
kyuu - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkI dunno what review you all were reading, but I didn't see average performance. I saw it pretty much beating everything else save the HTC One S/X with only a single-core and running an old version of Android. Wth ICS, it'd probably be at the top easily.
Sure, ARM isn't sitting still, but is Intel. I have no desire to see Intel overtake the market, but I can easily see Intel being the performance king by a good margin in the mobile SoC market when they release their next SoC.
Also, for people saying cost is a factor... do you have any source to back up the claim that Intel's SoC is significantly more costly? All I see are assumptions. Reply
kyuu - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThat's "neither is Intel" in the second paragraph, first sentence. Reply
UpSpin - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkSunSpider and Browsermark results are that good because of software tweaks done by Intel. Intel tweaked a lot in software, thus I doubt that ICS will improve anything further.
Linpack single threaded, that's the most important benchmark to compare raw processing power without software tweaks. It shows that Medifield is faster than ARM A9, a good sign, but slower than Krait and thus all soon to get released A15 cores, a bad sign.
Linpack multi threaded shows that Medfield has not the slightest chance vs. Krait and ARM A15, most of them will be dual core SoCs, but even if they get produced in single core varients they will be faster (Linpack single threaded). Medifield also gets beaten by Quad Core A9 chips (all new high end smartphones pack either a Quad Core A9, or dual Core krait/A15). Medfield is at best, as fast as a dual core A9 (raw processing power).
Then take a look at the GPU: Poor performance for todays standards. Slower than the SGSII, slightly faster than the Galaxy Nexus, which has a slow GPU, too.
Power consumption: poor to average. (sadly we don't have numbers for Krait or Tegra 3 (HTC One X/S)
The SoC is not bad at all, but its release date is one year too late. This year is the year of Krait and A15, which beat Medfield in single threaded applications and are at least dual cores, so more than twice as fast. The integrated GPU is pretty weak, too, especially if you consider that this years ARM SoCs have a much better GPU.
Additionally x86, the advantage is huge software tweaks thanks to Intel, the disadvantage, custom skins/apps/features made by third party manufacturers won't run that easily. Reply
Linpack is also a lousy benchmark. Any serious vector FP code on a phone (like matrix stuff for a game) would use SIMD with compiler intrinsics or ASM, and probably single precision over double precision. But even as a Dalvik double precision floating point test it sucks because it's not tiled and therefore heavily bandwidth limited.
Basically, most of the benchmarks used are awful. Reply
clockerspiel - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThe cell phone industry desparately needs a "flagship" representative for the Android ecosystem - and this ain't it! Reply
jjj - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkYou can't normalize battery life unless you factor in the screen size since the screen uses a lot of power and the handset's volume is directly related to the screen size and battery size.
By normalizing you are making things worse than better.If you can't measure the power consumption for just the SoC you might as well just provide the system's battery life since,in the end, that's what matters anyway.
It is what it is,you can't take out the screen or the RAM or the NAND but that's no reason to make things worse with tests that distort the reality instead of helping. Reply
menting - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkuhh, it's not measuring the power consumption for the SoC, it's measuring the whole phone's power usage. So in this case, normalizing IS a valid way to go about this. Reply
plamengv - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkIt is beyond me why Intel will market x86 CPU with OS that has nothing to do with x86. The people who want Android will always go with the better looking and cheaper device. Something that this device is not. The other with knowledge will go for iPhone because there is no other alternative. Windows Phone is from professional point of view worse than Windows Mobile 6.5 and lacks lot of features. Intel had to bet on Windows 7 turning the smartphones into UMPC. Imagine Viliv S5 shrinked to Galaxy Note but running Windows 7! Well maybe Haswell and 22nm will finally make it. Reply
menting - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkandroid was built from Linux..tell me where Linux has nothing to do with x86. And with future android versions including x86 compiles by default., x86 or not isn't an issue.
The X900 is a reference design, who says other companies can't put a different external case on it? And where's proof that it will be more expensive? Reply
superPC - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkwhy windows 7? windows 8 would be a lot better suited for something similar with this phone (with compatible GPU). Reply
jwcalla - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkWell... it's competitive. Ultimately it'll come down to who has the most desirable device. We know Apple has it's iPhone... Samsung the Galaxy S... Motorola the Droid Razr, etc. Intel would need to get in with one of those companies and be a top device to be accepted. Nobody is going to buy it just because it's Intel. (Except the fanboys of course.) Reply
dt1561 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkLooks cool but nothing extraordinary. Reply
fic2 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkNot that it matters much but does the display use Gorilla Glass? Reply
snoozemode - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkSure it's fun that Intel finally has proven that x86/Atom works in a smartphone, but the overall result is just a very bland phone that's not superior at anything really. And with a price of $420.. Why would anyone buy this? Reply
A5 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkThat's $420 with no contract. Considering the average carrier subsidy is $300-$400, this is a firmly mid-range device. Reply
fm123 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkThat is the price in India, which could be a completely different situation than other countries. Reply
sonicmerlin - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkSo given the nature of x86, can we self-install other compatible operating systems such as an x86 port of MeeGo? I'm *very* interested in using MeeGo outside of the N9. What about the x86 ICS image that Google makes available on its own website? Are there any customization or tweaking requirements, or can we install any new OS the same way we would install Linux or Windows on typical x86 hardware?
That would be the ultimate advantage of an x86 phone or tablet, no?
Finally, the battery tests here don't discuss standby battery life. That's always been an issue with Android, and is why every other OS seems to have much longer battery life than Android. We don't use our smartphones the way these battery torture tests suggest we do. Could you please download an app like Battery Monitor Widget and indicate how many mA are being used during standby? Reply
dcollins - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkInstalling a new OS requires supported drivers. MeeGo could be installed in theory if you ported the necessary drivers from Android. They are both Linux based, so this is theoretically possible, but it will require a lot of hacking and technical expertise. The Windows driver model is totally different so you would have to reverse engineer drivers from scratch. That's not going to happen.
This fight is not about x86 versus ARM as ISAs. It's about Intel versus ARM licensees: who can develop a faster, lower power chip? If Intel does their job well, the ISA shouldn't matter to the end user. Reply
sonicmerlin - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkI think you misunderstand. MeeGo already provides support for x86. Technically it's now "Tizen", but regardless it's been developed with both ARM and x86 in mind. My main question is whether we can self-install an x86 port of MeeGo (or Tizen) onto this phone? Reply
fteoath64 - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link¨This fight is not about x86 versus ARM as ISAs. It's about Intel versus ARM licensees¨
It blows down to just that!. The cost efficiency of ARM chips will just kill any chance of Intel getting into this market. Just look at a completely built Android handset made in china with retina display for $119. A retailer selling it for $160-199 will made heaps, if billions of units are involved. All licenses of chips and Android are legit. Not copycat stuff. Genuine Cortex A9 licenses.
It comes at a time when having 4-5 suppliers of ARM chips have made the market very resilient, something a single supplier can never do. So I say to Intel again, get an ARM license and play this game the right way. You can innovate very nicely with competition, and you really need that competition to keep your edge. Reply
jed22281 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkVanilla MeeGo is nothing like MeeGo-Harmattan (aka Maemo6x) on the N9...
The only relation Tizen has with Vanilla MeeGo, is that it's structured/administered in a similar fashion.
Plus many of the same partners involved in MeeGo, have moved to Tizen...
The developmental libraries/environment is totally different, although there's still some tacit support for Qt.
MeR+Nemo (& other UX's e.g. Cordia/Plasma etc) is what has supplanted the original MeeGo.
And yes you could in theory run MeR+Nemo or Tizen on this or other Medfied devices.
But I'm not so sure they'd necessarily be any less locked down than ARM-based ones.
Locked boot loader etc... But once that's out of the way, they'd have their advantages. Reply
ironargonaut - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkFrom what I see the only phones that best Intel in performance are not on the battery chart.
If a phone computes something faster, will that not mean it can do more in less time? Thus, while the artificial surfing battery time is "average", wouldn't I be able to surf more pages and run more apps also in that same time period?
What is the power/performance metric? Reply
fm123 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkThere is no clear way to tell from this, given that the CPU is likely ramping up and down. The other phones are not listed, I suspect, as they are new. They actually include newer battery saving features, so you can't see that yet on this comparison. Reply
ironargonaut - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkSo,then could I safely say, that since battery life is not listed here, of the phones in both tests Intel has the highest cpu performance with midrange battery life.
If they are not going to test the batteries of the same phones then you shouldn't have them listed on the same graph for CPU power. IMHO
It's like a Ford commercial saying Ford fullsize has better gas mileage then Chevy, more towing power than Dodge, more cargo space then Toyota etc..
Which if written the way of this article is more like Ford worse gas mileage than Dodge, less towing power than Toyota, less cargo space then Chevy etc...
All are misleading. IMHO Reply
mcquade181 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkFor the benefit of all us older technophiles with slightly less than perfect hearing, could you please, please test the earpiece volume when testing cellular phones?
I had to ditch my otherwise great Nokia N8 because of its ridiculously low earpiece volume, which made it unusable in anything but perfectly quiet environments.
The other very useful test would be how well the phone operates in both voice and data modes in areas at the fringe of network coverage, i.e. the phone's range. The Samsung Galaxy S2 does not fare that well in this test and is no where near as good as my old Nokia N8. Surprisingly, very, very few reviews of the Galaxy S2 mention how average its fringe reception is. Reply
cmdrdredd - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkTo not include any iphone results to the GLbenchmark except offscreen since offscreen looks so great on the iphone and the results I've obtained from around the web when running on the phone's screen show it not to be that much better than the fastest Android devices. How many people ac tually do GPU functions that aren't running on the phone's screen? Not many... Reply
suman - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - linkWhile BT is very cool technology, why is there so much hoopla around it. We released the Bluestacks App Player (beta) a month ago and have a binary translator embedded in it. We can run ARM NDK, X86 NDK, Dalvik applications side by side on our player. Reply
iamastranger - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkBasically all are missing a point here. It is a FFRD with miimal changes done by LAVA. Wait for a OEM like Moto deliver x86 based phone. Reply
danielt - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkHoe come this site never review the amazing Galaxy Note? Reply
RajeevRaj - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkOne aspect not touched upon here is the price of the XOLO as compared to the other smartphones in the compare list. The XOLO costs INR 22000 ($420). Most other phones in the list (which are available in India) cost upwards of INR 27-28000 (>$520). As example the Samsung Galaxy S2 costs INR 28-30,000 ($550) and iPhones cost upward of INR 35000. (>$700)
So if you factor in a price to features ratio also in the comparisons, the XOLO looks very attractive for a smartphone buyer in India. Reply
diulaylomochohai - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - linkWhere are the numbers for HTC 1X and 1S??? Let see how much INTC is off from latest and greatest from NVDA and QCOM??? Reply
dwade123 - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkIntel proves x86 can compete. With Intel's engineering and manufacturing advantages, Intel may soon surpass ARM in just about everything in the future. I still remember those who thinks ARM's transition to desktop is a threat to the entirety of Intel. Nope. It's the other way around. Intel is invading the low wattage CPU arena. Hate them or love them. The future is Intel. Reply
jwcalla - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkI lol'd. Reply
jwcalla - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkApple just crapped out $12 billion in pure profit in just the last quarter. That's over 4x the profit that Intel saw, and Apple had almost 4x as much total revenue as Intel.
The iCraze is in full song and Android is right up there with them. The masses don't care about x86 on a smartphone. And they're not going to. They want the iShiny. Only the dinosaurs that are hooked into these mythical "necessary" legacy x86 mobile apps are going to care about an Intel phone or tablet. And they're going to want them sporting a turbo button and USB-powered 5.25" floppy drive.
pheadland - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkSmall correction: I know Samsung says the GS2 only takes 32GB SD cards, but numerous people, including me, have 64GB SDXC cards working just fine in their GS2s (and many other Android phones).
This trend to omit SD expansion and provide only 16GB built-in is puzzling and annoying. I have around 40GB of music. TV shows and movies can run multiple GB each. Streaming just doesn't cut it in rural areas or on planes. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, May 02, 2012 - linkHave you put more than 32 GB of data on that 64 GB card, to make sure it's actually able to use all of it? Just curious, more than anything. Reply
Exophase - Friday, April 27, 2012 - linkIn the article you say that the translations are taken from Intel's servers in order to avoid the overhead of doing it on the phone. I doubt this is true, because based on Intel's publications the translation in its current state isn't that sophisticated and unless it is very poorly coded there's no way it'd be slower to do it on the device than pull it off the network.
I think the real reason they did this is so they can improve the translation quality w/o updating the phones. Part of this could include hand optimizing hot spots or fixing incompatibilities in some of the more problematic games. Maintaining a database of program specific modifications on every phone would not be a good move.
The article had some good information but I'm disappointed in the total lack of attention given to games. In the big list of apps that work fine I could only spot one game. For comparison, S|A tried two games - both worked, but one of them had awful performance. The phone game market is huge right now and it'd be nice to see someone try several - dozens, perhaps? - of games on the unit. But if they don't, the review should at least indicate that it's not focusing on it. With reviews like this it feels like phone gaming is almost completely devalued, which is bizarre given that several GPU benchmarks are performed, and GPU performance benefits little more than gaming.
Of course, the battery life tests also don't address gaming. The iPhone 4S review had at least one gaming test (for something really resource intensive) so it's not like there's zero precedent for it.
The big open questions for Intel putting x86 phones have never been if they can implement competitive GPUs or media blocks or even if they can have very low power consumption when there's low CPU activity. These things are obvious and Intel has already proven themselves on all of these fronts. What people want to know, or at least what I want to know, is what the power consumption is like when the CPU is being heavily accessed. In other words, I want an idea of perf/W. Talk time tests use a negligible amount of CPU. Browser tests use an unknown amount of CPU - it could be literally anything depending on what sites you use and how the idle parameters are tuned. I'd love to see some CPU utilization + frequency graphics during this test. But suffice it to say, if you're trying to simulate the user browser experience it'll consists of small periods of heavy activity while pages are loaded and vast periods of low activity while the user reads what's on the page.
This is totally different from at least a lot of games, where the CPU constantly has to do something. This both increases the average frequency it has to operate in and gives it less time to go from full idle to full activity.
At the very least it'd be nice to see some video playback battery tests. This (ideally) doesn't use much CPU either, and I'm sure Medfield does just fine here, but it's at least an important use case that should be validated. When you're on an airplane I'm sure you won't be using your phone for talking or web browsing. Reply
kuroxp - Monday, May 21, 2012 - linksay sorry! see updates. :D Reply
sjprg2 - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - linkAre all the cell phone makers STUPID? Where is the hands free bluetooth support with caller ID such as the Motorola V750 has? These are supposed to be phone! You can't drive in Califorina with the existing smartphones. They are not legal! Reply
derodg - Monday, May 07, 2012 - linkYou people are forgetting one very important thing here. This is x86 device! I should in theory be able to run any x86 compatible OS. Which includes Windows 8 that has a touch interface. This means I could dock my phone to a larger display use a keyboard and mouse. Then pick it up an walk out the door and use the same device.
And once they get dual-cores in the Atom. Not only can I just buy one app. I can use it on my desktop and mobile device because they both would be the same. Reply
Emran - Monday, June 25, 2012 - linkInternet speed, camera clarity, battery time, and other specification Reply
grindBoy - Thursday, July 12, 2012 - linkWhat about the app compatilbilty with general apps like whatsapp (quite popular in india) and TempleRun? Share some experience withe the common apps. Reply
DesDizzy - Wednesday, September 05, 2012 - linkSounds like a winning formula to me, average performance at 4x the cost of the competition. Reply
amodrode - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link@AnandTech, as Xolo X900 has got an upgrade of ICS now, please redo the benchmarking tests. It would be wonderful if you can list the upgrades from Gingerbread to ICS and a comparative analysis between both OS versions. Reply
dhananjayroy - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - linkI brought this phone after i read the in dept review of this phone.
I got the phone with pre updated ICS.
This phone is really good no doubt about that but the camera is below average and the battery drains really fast
Playing games listening to music watching videos, web surfing is a delight. A well made phone for sure .... Reply
manoj7878 - Wednesday, May 08, 2013 - linkI sold my smartphone at www.smartphonecashin.com - was a bit reluctant at first because they offer more money than anyone else, but the process was easy and hassle free Reply