ZTE Grand X IN: New Intel Medfield Based Smartphone Coming to Europe
by Stefan Constantinescu on August 30, 2012 9:20 AM ESTZTE is announcing a new smartphone today, the Grand X IN. It's their first Intel based smartphone, and it makes use of the same Medfield platform we reviewed back in April. That means there's a single core Intel Atom Z2640 inside clocked at 1.6 GHz, with hyper-threading enabled of course, 1 GB of RAM, and Intel's XMM 6260 baseband, which provides 21 Mbps HSPA+. Unlike other Intel based smartphones that failed to deviate from the Intel reference design, ZTE has performed several modifications. The two most noteworthy here are the screen and the actual design.
Starting with the screen, Intel's reference platform ships with a 4.03 inch 1024 x 600 pixel LCD display. ZTE decided to swap that out and go with a 4.3 inch 960 x 540 pixel LCD display. And as for the design, Intel's reference platform was pretty much a perfect rectangle for all intents and purposes. Here ZTE has chosen to add some much needed curves. Without seeing the phone in person it's difficult to judge how handsome it looks, but we'd say it's somewhat similar to the Samsung Nexus S.
As for the other specs, there's an 8 megapixel rear facing camera, a 0.3 megapixel front facing camera, the battery holds 1,650 mAh, and curiously enough the GSM radio on-board isn't quadband. You get support for 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz, so don't expect to take this thing to America. On the 3G front you're looking at support on the 900 MHz and 2100 MHz bands.
And finally, the Grand X IN measures 127 mm x 65 mm x 9.9 mm; it also weighs 140.8 grams. Expect this device to hit Europe next month running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Pricing is unknown.
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jibberegg - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
What's the reason for not having quad band support? Does the different chIp really reduce the BoM enough to justify it?S_Constantinescu - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Knowing ZTE, if they can save a penny then they'll save that penny.Penti - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Probably because it's geared for other markets, here in Sweden we use 900 MHz and 2100 MHz for 3G/W-CDMA/HSPA+ as well as GSM bands 900MHz, and 1800MHz it's pretty standard for the whole of EMEA market. We also have LTE at 800MHz and 2600MHz of course. Maybe also at 900MHz at some point when transceivers/RF-parts supports more bands on LTE and they change around their old GSM stuff. I think this looks really good, as a smartphone/computing device. Would love to have a half decent camera in my next phone though. Strange not to support 850MHz GSM however. Would be vital for many markets. But I've seen that before from ZTE-phones.I see they have dedicated buttons, wounder why they opted for it.
BSMonitor - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
ARM is going to regret taunting Intel.Even if ARM processors outperform Intel Atom's by 10-20% as of now.. Intel has a huge lead on all other chip Fabs in terms of raw production capacity. Add to the that, a lead on 14 and 22nm and 450mm wafer technology. Intel will probably be able to undercut pricing of the various ARM Fabs by any amount they wish. Their margins are ridiculous already, add to that tiny Atom cores on 450mm wafers.
Bottom line, MOST smart phone owners have no idea what's under the hood. x86, ARM, it's not going to matter to them. And Intel can deliver when pushed to do so, aka. Apple, Google, etc..
ARM should have just left the den quietly.. Not a good idea to kick the sleeping bear.
chucknelson - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Sounds like good competition to me. Let's see what Intel can do :)jwcalla - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Come on, this is silly. Not that Intel doesn't have a shot here and they definitely will gain market share, but the super-phones are making the sales and they'll lead the way. Like you say, people don't care if it's x86 or ARM as long as it's a Galaxy S or iPhone. Why would Samsung buy chips from Intel when they can make their own and cut out the middleman? And why would Apple depend on Intel when they can design their own chip, not to mention that Apple's compiler toolchain doesn't really yield great performance on x86.Intel will have to go above and beyond their competition to bring significant partners on board IMO, and even then they'll be forced into competitive prices. Teh internets claim a Tegra 3 is $25 and we all know teh internets are never wrong.
And all this assumes that Intel's ARM binary translation performance is truly up to snuff.
All that said, Intel does have a Motorola phone lined up so that'll be the first true test of consumer interest.
DanNeely - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Samsung has used 3rd party chips in their phones before. The reason behind doing so is that requiring their semiconductor division to compete with rivals will prevent it from becoming complacent due to a guaranteed internal market for its product.Penti - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
Well the real idea behind that is that their divisions (companies now days even) are separated. I have a Samsung screen with a Taiwanese panel, it's the monitor division that handles the sourcing not the panel making business or fabs. Companies don't source from themselves automatically. You have Qualcomm, ST-E, TI etc supplying application processors and even more companies supplying radio/modem hardware too. They are interested in selling devices, they just happen to have a business that designs chips too. It's not designed around some proprietary chips as their semiconductor business weren't exactly set up to supply them that way. It's not like when companies merge and replaces everything with their own tech. You do that to kill competition and Samsung's semi business is aimed at a larger market and don't compete against themselves.Samsung on the other hand has no reason to switch to x86 or MIPS just because of the Android SDK/NDK (at some level) support for those platforms. But there are many other players around, ZTE, Huawei, Motorola Mobility, Lenovo, Kyocera, LG, Pantech, Asus, Acer, HTC, in Japan you also have NEC/Casio, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Panasonic and Sharp and so on. So you have many clients for Intel ones chip and software support is a no-brainer. An attractive platform appeals to most. Maybe even Samsung as they don't tend to lift up the processor/tech but product. A growing (smartphone) market will obviously have room for them. You sell platforms not chips most of the time. Handset makers just care about their end-customers or telecom customers if Intel fits it will sell quite well. It's not much of a problem. It's not like Samsungs chips is geared for the really low end devices that Intel can't compete with either. Samsung semiconductor business can always sell or fab for other customers. They where the ones designing the A4 together with a Texas business that Apple later bought. Besides somebody needs to deliver the DRAM and NAND to Intel platforms too. In this business it's seldom about trying to undermine your competitors that you obviously work with at some level.
Patflute - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Terrible res for the size of the screen.Patflute - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Ew is this thing not even Android 4.0?