Lava XOLO X900 based on Intel Medfield, launched in India.

Lava International, together with Intel has just launched their first smartphone based on Intel’s brand new Medfield Atom processors. The Lava X900 will be part of the XOLO series so we can expect more phones to be added over the coming months. We first caught a glimpse of the phone back in January during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Lava has priced this phone quite attractively at Rs.22,000 and should be available shortly. At this price range, the X900 has the Motorola Atrix 2 and the HTC Sensation to answer to so its success or failure all boils down to how good the Atom chip really is and if it can stand up to ARM, a veteran in the mobile phone processor space.

The X900 sports a 4.03-inch display with a rather high resolution of 1024 x 600, thereby, lending it a pixel count of 297ppi. The TFT LCD display also features Corning’s Gorilla Glass. The phone will ship with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but is upgradeable to 4.0 down the line. It measures around 10.9mm thick and weighs 127g, so it’s fairly slim and light. It’s a quad band GSM and 3G phone with support for HSPA+. The highlight of this phone is the new Medfield CPU from Intel, the Z2460. Based on the 32nm fabrication process, the Z2460 SoC features a single core CPU running at 1.6GHz along with the usual Intel features like HyperThreading and Burst Performance Technology (or TurboBoost). The graphics is taken care of by PowerVR SGX540 GPU, which is clocked at 400MHz. There’s also support for 1080p video playback and recording. Intel is also banking heavily on their new Smart Idle Technology for better battery life than its competitors. This feature allows the CPU core and rest of the processor to switch off while the OS is still functional.

The camera is an 8MP auto-focus shooter with an LED flash. Like the One X, the X900 also feature burst mode which lets you capture 10 images in less than a second. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi ‘n’, NFC, Bluetooth 2.1, HDMI-out and 16GB of internal memory. The only weak point appears to be the battery, which is just 1460mAh. However, if Intel has done their homework right, then this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Here are some of the highlights once more:

Android 2.3, upgradable to 4.0
1.6 GHz single core (two threads) CPU
4.03-inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 1024 x 600
8MP camera with AF, LED flash, and 1080p HD video recording
1.3MP front camera
16GB Internal memory
1GB RAM
NFC, Wi-Fi, micro-USB 2.0, HDMI, Bluetooth
1460mAh battery