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Intel gives in-depth demo of future smartphone

At the Consumer Electronics Show, a company representative gave a relatively in-depth demonstration of a future smartphone from LG Electronics. Watch the video.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
Brooke Crothers

Watch this: Intel gives in-depth demo of new LG smartphone

LAS VEGAS--An Intel executive gave a surprisingly in-depth demonstration of a future LG GW990 smartphone from LG Electronics here at CES.

Pankaj Kedia, director of Intel's Global Ecosystems Program for Mobile Internet Devices and Smart Phones, walked me through the phone's interface (see above video) on Friday. It runs on Intel's Moblin operating system and was surprisingly functional for a phone that is due, most likely, in the second half of the year. Intel CEO Paul Otellini brandished the LG GW990 during a CES keynote on Thursday but he demonstrated nothing approaching what Kedia showed me.

To state the obvious (or maybe not so obvious to some), the world's largest chipmaker doesn't make chips for smartphones. It makes processors for virtually every other kind of personal computing device, but not for the burgeoning smartphone market. At least not yet.

Intel's "Moorestown" system-on-a-chip, due in the first half of this year, will contain an Atom processor and is targeted at smartphones and other handheld devices. It will be more highly integrated than the current Atom processor used in Netbooks and much more power-efficient.

The chipmaker is working with both LG Electronics and Nokia to bring out smartphones packing the Moorestown chip.

I was pleasantly surprised at the device's interface and its ability to multitask. Again, see the video for a demonstration of how adept the phone is at multitasking and other features.

Updated on January 9 at 6:50 a.m. PST: adding name of LG smartphone.