In our CES 2012 Day 2 update, we mentioned the release of a new smartphone - the Lenovo K800 - powered by Intel's Medfield platform. It is not possible to run any meaningful benchmark tests on the display set so the true performance of the Intel smartphone is an unknown. However, the folks from AnandTech managed to get their hands on Intel’s reference design, ran some benchmarks on it and compared it to the latest high end smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Droid Razr, iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S2.
The results?
Not something that Motorola and Samsung would like to show their users:
Intel's Medfield platform actually performed much better than all the other smartphones in the test. Yes, that list includes the Galaxy Nexus which is running Android 4.0 and which, in theory, should offer better performance in general. Intel has promised that the performance of the Medfield will scale with Android 4.0 and so, the gap that we are seeing now should at least be maintained, if not, increased with the introduction of ICS.
If you expect power consumption to increase with performance improvement, the Intel Medfield platform once again throws up some surprising data. Intel's power consumption during standby (3G), talk (3G) and browsing is actually the lowest as compared to iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S2 and only during video playback did it pale in comparison.
Data from both performance benchmarks and power consumption looks great for the new Intel platform and these data should be enough to entice manufacturers to give it a try. Motorola and Lenovo have already announced partnerships with Intel. Who will be next?
