Intel promised way back in 2009 that we’d be seeing Medfield-based smartphones in 2011, and it looks like those have now gotten one step closer to reality. While there’s unfortunately few details to be had, that’s apparently a Medfield-based smartphone of some sort in the hand of Intel’s Anand Chandrasekher above, who apparently showed off the phone (possibly a prototype) ever so briefly at the company’s sales and marketing conference last week. Could it be a sign of things to come at MWC next month? Maybe, maybe not, but we’ll be there to find out.
Squint, or you’ll miss it. The tiny slab of shininess clutched in the hands of Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, is apparently a Medfield based smartphone that, according to the Maemo forums, was shown off at an Intel sales conference last week.
Details on the handset are almost entirely unknown, bar the chipset, but Intel hasn’t been shy with its Medfield expectations. Back in August 2010 the company promised to match ARM’s chipsets – currently the popular favorite in mobile devies like smartphones – for active power consumption with the new Medfield processors, which are expected to debut in shipping devices later this year.
At least one of those devices, so the rumors would have it, will be from Nokia’s stable and run MeeGo, the two companies’ collaborative open-source OS. Leaks earlier this month suggested the Nokia N9 had been reworked using a 1.2GHz Medfield processor and dropping the hardware keyboard, and would be shown off at MWC 2011 next month.
Microsoft is reportedly pestering Intel for a 16-core version of its Atom processor, which would provide a low-power alternative to mainstream chips for use in data servers. Dileep Bhandarkar, an engineer at Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services, suggested that higher-power Intel chips more commonly positioned for servers, such as the Xeon, demand too much power and active cooling in return for their higher clock speeds, PC World reports, and that there is a “huge opportunity” for a different strategy to data center processing.
“When you look at these tiny cores, another way of making them work in a very efficient way is [not to] surround them with a whole bunch of south bridges and network controllers. … Essentially, the tiny cores and systems-on-chip should go together” Dileep Bhandarkar, Microsoft
Global Foundation Services is the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the hosting of Bing, Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger, together with Sharepoint and Exchange installations for businesses. Bhandarkar said that ARM’s work on server processors was interesting but unproven, however it “lights a fire under Intel and AMD to deliver more effective x86 solutions.”
For its part, Intel said it had “no announcements to make” regarding new Atom chips, but did point to the fact that its existing processors are already found in at least one HP Windows Home Server model.
Nokia needs to “change faster” to keep up with the cellphone market, CEO Stephen Elop has admitted, but it’s his ecosystem comments during the company’s financial results call that have tongues wagging. The Nokia/Android/Windows Phone 7 speculation has proven sturdily resilient to common sense and the Finns’ own denials, and Elop’s suggestion that Nokia “must build, catalyse or join a competitive ecosystem” is unlikely to do much bar fueling the rumors.
“Nokia must compete on ecosystem to ecosystem basis. In addition to great device experiences we must build, catalyse or join a competitive ecosystem. And the ecosystem approach we select must be comprehensive and cover a wide range of utilities and services that customers expect today and anticipate in the future” Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia
At face value, that could certainly be interpreted as a sign that Nokia might consider lending its much-appreciated hardware skills to producing a device running something other than Symbian or MeeGo. The CEO’s specific focus on the US market, meanwhile, could also lend weight to that. ”Whatever the strategy is we outline on February 11,” Elop continued, “we very clearly [must ensure] that it will give us the opportunity to reopen markets such as the U.S. and some others, where we have not recently been present.”
For a company that strives to be so self-contained, though, persisting with Symbian while readying MeeGo devices still looks the most likely route. Nokia’s “competitive ecosystem” could well refer to Intel’s low-power Atom platform, or a more general indication that it intends to compete in the smartphone chipset arms-race which currently dictates the US handset market. We’ve already seen suggestions that the company is working on a high-powered MeeGo tablet based on dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processors; that would give the company an admirable spec-sheet that could take on any rival.
Acer has unveiled its latest netbook, the Aspire One E100 Education, and as the name suggests it’s targeted at classrooms. The 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 ultraportable dual-boots Windows 7 and Android – the latter being positioned as an instant-on option for quick browsing – and can be specified with a rubberized coating for bump protection; there’s also a pocket into which a student can slot their name card, so that multiple E100 units don’t get confused.
Other specs include a 250GB hard-drive, 1GB of RAM and WiFi b/g/n, together with Bluetooth 2.1 and a multi-format memory card reader. It uses an unspecified Intel Atom processor, weighs about a pound and is 24mm thick; Acer reckons the battery is good for 8hrs of runtime.
As for software, there’s apparently a variety of free education apps on offer, and Acer also preloads its Classroom Manager app which allows a teacher to remotely interact with multiple student systems. No word on pricing at this stage.
With the tablet torrent at CES 2011 we’ll admit to having forgotten about bModo’s 12G tablet, announced in October last year, but the 11.6-inch Windows 7 slate has now shown up for a full review. AllTouchTablet picked up the $849.99 slate – which runs a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 single-core CPU with 2GB of RAM and Broadcom’s CrystalHD video accelerator – and found the Windows experience to be pretty solid, with media playback impressing.
Video demo after the cut
On its own, the Atom CPU and integrated GMA 3150 graphics aren’t going to do much good, but the Broadcom chip helps the tablet handle 1080p HD video (as long as it uses a supported codec). Unfortunately CPU-only tasks – like handwriting recognition in Windows 7 – aren’t as slick, and the 2.5-3hr battery life is pretty woeful when you compare it to the iOS or Android competition.
bModo has slapped a custom UI – triggered with a dedicated touch-sensitive key – to help Windows 7 with its finger friendliness, but it’s the lack of pocket-friendliness which really seems to scupper the 12G. At $849.99 – or $799.99 for the 1GB RAM version – and then another $75 for the optional dock (which doesn’t have an HDMI or other graphics output, and props the 12G up at a particularly steep angle) it’s expensive for a slate.
Nokia’s MeeGo-based N9 flagship smartphone has hit a few hurdles along the way; originally the company hoped to have a MeeGo device on the market by the end of 2010, a window that slipped to 2011. Initially, the N9 was expected to use a Texas Instruments OMAP processor, as with its existing handsets. However, according to Finnish magazine Prosessori, Nokia has junked the TI chip and opted instead to power the N9 with a 1.2GHz Intel Atom processor
The nature of that Atom CPU isn’t clear – it could be from the current Moorestown line-up, or more likely it would be a lower-power Medfield chip from the range expected to debut later this year. However, it would certainly bring the Intel/Nokia partnership closer together, and be a unique differentiator for the MeeGo handset.
There’s also talk of an LTE prototype and the same 12-megapixel camera from the Nokia N8, but most interesting is the suggestion that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will officially unveil the new N9 at Mobile World Congress 2011 next month. SlashGear has been speaking to a number of industry insiders over the past few weeks about what to expect from the Barcelona show, and they’ve told us that there’s talk of something big from Nokia this year; no details at this stage, unfortunately, but we’ll be at MWC bringing you all the news as it’s announced.
Nokia has to do something big if it wants to crack the US smartphone market. We can agree on that, right? And believe us, Nokia wants this — nothing will make the mighty Finns (and the company’s global investors) prouder than to gain some traction in the home of Apple pie and Google desserts. So how will the company do it? With
Symbian? Oh, hell no.
By introducing another MeToo handset? Nope, with MeeGo on a rockin’ platform like the rumored N9 slider pictured above.
Nokia announced its hardware plans for Maemo 6 a long time ago. At that time, the company was clear that it would continue using TI OMAP processors. Much has changed since then, however. In addition to several keyleadershipchanges including a new Canadian-born CEO who spent much of his time working in the US, Nokia has joined Intel to roll up Maemo 6 and Moblin into MeeGo with Nokia’s first Maemo 6 MeeGo/Harmattan handset pushed into 2011. Simultaneously, Intel has also been doing its best to show its new Moorestown platform as a powerful ARM alternative, even showing off MeeGo handsets exploiting a Lincroft SoC and Atom processor core.
And Intel has said that Medfield-based smartphones (Moorestown’s
successor) would arrive in the middle of 2011.
So why the build-up? Well, we’ve just been tipped to a claim by Prosessori, a respected Finnish technology magazine, ?that the Nokia N9 will launch with a 1.2GHz Atom processor. Better yet, it could be unveiled as soon as Mobile World Congress in February, presumably during Stephen Elop’s keynote. Do we believe it? Not entirely, but it is possible given the chain of events that have taken place. And you can bet that the first commercially available Intel smartphone with a brand new Nokia user experience would certainly grab headlines in the US and around the world. Something that should translate into high-end market share (and profits) if it’s as “exciting” as Elop claims.
Intel has announced ambitions to see Windows 8 – the next-gen version of the Microsoft desktop OS – on smartphones based on its own SoC, with CEO Paul Otellini describing the prospect as “an upside opportunity for us.” According to PC Pro, Otellini expects that Intel’s low-power Atom processors – as found in the OCOSMOS OSC1 – will be ideally suited to Microsoft’s promised “designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled” OS.
“The plus for Intel is that as they unify their operating systems, we now have the ability for the first time… to have a designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don’t have today. Secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors running Windows 8 – or ‘next-generation Windows’ – into phones, because it’s the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us” Paul Otellini, Intel
The move will put Intel at odds not only with rival ARM, the processors of which are found in the vast majority of existing smartphones, but also with Microsoft itself. The software giant has previously insisted that it sees full-Windows for tablet-scale mobile devices and Windows Phone 7 for smartphone-scale devices.
While many have argued Intel’s processors are too power-greedy for ultraportable mobile devices, Otellini is also keen to talk about ARM’s potential shortcomings in larger devices. “[The PC] space has a different set of power and performance requirements where Intel is exceptionally good” he insists.
ASUS’ upcoming “Sirocco” Eee PC may well be the the Eee PC 1005PW 1015PW, according to the latest tips, with the dune-textured netbooks getting an unofficial pre-unveil preview. According to imidoresc, the ASUS Eee PC 1015PW Sirocco will be a 10.1-inch WSVGA netbook with Intel’s Atom N550 processor and up to 10hrs battery life.
There’s also a choice of 250GB or 320GB hard-drives, Bluetooth 3.0 and a -.3-megapixel webcam. We’re guessing on WiFi b/g/n and the usual trio of USB 2.0 ports, single ethernet, audio in/out and a memory card reader as well. It’s expected to weigh around 1.25kg.
Pricing and availability haven’t been revealed, but this is looking pretty mainstream for a current netbook, and not the hurricane ultraportable the “Sirocco” name led us to hope for. We’ll find out all the details on Wednesday when the netbook is announced officially.
