Lenovo has released a new smartphone this week at CES, the IdeaPhone K900 which is intended for Eastern European & Asian markets. It is one of the first smartphones to run Intel’s new 2 GHz dual-core Atom processor.
Here’s a rundown of the specs:
- 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display
- 2 GHz dual-core Intel Atom chip
- 13-megapixel rear camera with dual flash/ 2-megapixel front-facing camera
- 2GB of RAM
- 16GB of storage
- Weight: 5.7 ounces
- Thickness: 6.9mm
The device was on display this evening at CES, but it was kept powered off, I suppose the software isn’t yet polished enough to be shown off to consumers.
To date, Lenovo hasn’t released an Android-based smartphone in the US, but in China, it is the second largest player in the smartphone scene after Samsung by market share. This continues to be true in the case of the IdeaPhone K900, at the moment it will be released in China in April, later followed by India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia and the Philippines. It seems unlikely that we’ll see this phone being released in the US, perhaps with enough success they’ll one day bring future android-based devices over to this side of the world.
Intel is fairly new to the SoC (System-on-Chip) scene which is what is used in most smartphones and tablets today. Most chips in smartphones and tablets in recent history have been manufactured by Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung using ARM-based CPUs. In the past, many had thought that Intel would never be able to produce a chip to power a smartphone properly (to provide good power and performance), but since testing on Intel’s Atom SOCs began in early 2012, industry reviews have said otherwise. In September of 2011, Google and Intel established a partnership to provide support for Android on Intel x86 processors.
There’s no information on which version of Android the phone will be released with. I’m certain it’ll do well in the countries that it will be released in, seeing Lenovo’s track record in China. Pricing information is not yet available either. I personally have never had the chance to try out a Lenovo smartphone, but would love the opportunity some day. Please let us know what your thoughts are on this upcoming Lenovo device, or even older Lenovo smartphones running the Android operating system in the comments section below.
[Photo credit: VentureBeat]