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Intel's Medfield-based smart phones to arrive this week

Smart phones packing Intel's new Atom Medfield processors are due, its CEO explains, but what form these phones will take isn't clear.

Andrew Lanxon Editor At Large, Lead Photographer, Europe
Andrew is CNET's go-to guy for product coverage and lead photographer for Europe. When not testing the latest phones, he can normally be found with his camera in hand, behind his drums or eating his stash of home-cooked food. Sometimes all at once.
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Andrew Lanxon
2 min read

Shiny smart phones running on Intel's Atom Medfield chips will soon be landing in our hands, promises the company's CEO, but what form these will take remains to be seen.

During a conference call with investors, Intel CEO Paul Otellini stated that the new Intel-based smart phones will be arriving as soon as this week. Before you get your hopes up, it's likely that the first launches will be in India, eWeek reports, so we'll probably have to wait a while before anything new lands in British shops.

Otellini was very shy on details about just what form these phones will take. At CES earlier this year, we saw talk of both Lenovo with its K800 and Motorola pairing with Intel for the new hardware, but further information on this has yet to surface.

The K800 we saw was an Android 2.3-powered phone, sporting a 4.5-inch screen with a 720p resolution. The Intel Atom chip will do exactly the same job as the chips in other smart phones, but Intel promises that its new architecture will be able to provide some serious power, while keeping battery use to a minimum. If we finally get a powerful phone with a battery that can last a day, I'll be pretty chuffed.

It's not just phones that are getting Intel worked up. Its latest processors -- codenamed Ivy Bridge -- are launching soon and aim to bring stonking performance to laptops and ultrabooks. We'll have to wait and see just what sort of blowers will be cropping up bearing the Intel name, but with the chip manufacturer having such a powerful hand in the mobile game, it's sure to pull a few gems out of the bag.

Do you want an Intel-based phone? Do you even care at all what's under the hood? Let me know in the comments below or over on our Facebook page.