Android smartphone with Intel chip coming in 2012

From InfoWorld: Intel hopes to boost its business selling chips to phone makers -- now the domain of rival ARM -- through a partnership announced this week with Google to develop future Android OS versions for mobile devices with Intel chips.

Intel and Google will jointly tune Android code at the kernel and driver level so future Android versions work with Intel-based smartphones and tablets. The partnership was announced at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, where Intel showed working units of a smartphone with Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread, and a tablet with Android 3.0, code-named Honeycomb. Both the devices ran on an Intel Atom chip code-named Medfield.

Intel officials said a smartphone with Medfield and Android would come in the first half next year.

Intel has made runs at the smartphone market over the past two years, but no handsets with Intel chips are yet available. Intel last year partnered with Nokia to develop the Linux-based MeeGo OS for smartphones, but Nokia abandoned the effort after adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone OS for future smartphones.

The partnership with Google shows that Intel is serious about smartphones and on target to deliver a handset next year, said Dave Whalen, vice president of the Intel Architecture Group and general manager of the Ultra Mobility Group, in an interview.

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