Lava Xolo X900 Review - The First Intel Medfield Phone
For Intel, the road to their first real competitive smartphone SoC has
been a long one. Shortly after joining AnandTech and beginning this
journey writing about both smartphones and the SoC space, I remember
hopping on a call with Anand and some Intel folks to talk about
Moorestown. While we never did see Moorestown in a smartphone, we did
see it in a few tablets, and even looked at performance in an OpenPeak Tablet
at IDF 2011. Back then performance was more than competitive against
the single core Cortex A8s in a number of other devices, but power
profile, lack of ISP, video encode, decode, or PoP LPDDR2 support, and
the number of discrete packages required to implement Moorestown, made
it impossible to build a smartphone around. While Moorestown was never
the success that Intel was hoping for, it paved the way for something
that finally brings x86 both down to a place on the power-performance
curve that until now has been dominated by ARM-powered SoCs, and
includes all the things hanging off the edges that you need (ISP,
encode, decode, integrated memory controller, etc), and it’s called Medfield. With Medfield, Intel finally has a real, bona fide SoC that is already in a number of devices shipping before the end of 2012.
In both an attempt to prove that its Medfield platform is competitive
enough to ship in actual smartphones, and speed up the process of
getting the platform to market, Intel created its own smartphone Form
Factor Reference Design (FFRD). While the act of making a reference
device is wholly unsurprising since it’s analogous to Qualcomm’s MSM
MDPs or even TI’s OMAP Blaze MDP, what is surprising is its polish and
aim. We’ve seen and talked about the FFRD a number of times before,
including our first glimpse at IDF 2011 and numerous times since then.
Led by Mike Bell (of Apple and Palm, formerly), a team at Intel with the
mandate of making smartphone around Medfield created a highly polished
device as both a demonstration platform for OEM customers and for sale
directly to the customer through participating carriers. This FFRD has
served as the basis for the first Medfield smartphones that will (and
already are) shipping this year, including the Orange Santa Clara,
Lenovo K800, and the device we’re looking at today, the Lava Xolo X900.
Future Medfield-based devices will deviate from the FFRD design (like the upcoming Motorola device),
but will still be based loosely on the whole Medfield platform. For
now, in the form of the X900 we’re basically looking at the FFRD with
almost no adulteration from carriers or other OEMs.
The purpose and scope of this review is ambitious and really covers two
things - both an overview of Intel’s Medfield platform built around the
Atom Z2460 Penwell SoC, and a review of the Xolo X900 smartphone FFRD
derivative itself.
The Device
Beginning April 23rd, Intel, through Lava International, began selling
the Xolo X900 smartphone in India for INR 22000 (~$420 USD). As we’ve
stated before, the design and construction of the Xolo X900 almost
identically mirrors the Intel FFRD we’ve seen before, from the
specifications and Medfield platform itself, to industrial design and
exterior buttons.
It’s a testament to the polish of the reference design that Mike Bell’s
team put together that Intel is confident enough to basically sell
exactly that device through carrier partners. I’ll admit I was skeptical
upon hearing that Intel would basically be selling their MDP to
customers, but the device’s fit and polish exceeded my expectations and
are clearly those of something ready for customer abuse. First up are
the X900 specifications in our regular table, Xolo also has its own
nicely presented specifications
page for the X900 online.
| Physical Comparison |
|
Apple iPhone 4S |
Samsung Galaxy S 2 |
Samsung Galaxy Nexus (GSM/UMTS) |
Lava Xolo X900 |
| Height |
115.2 mm (4.5") |
125.3 mm (4.93") |
135.5 mm (5.33") |
123 mm (4.84") |
| Width |
58.6 mm (2.31") |
66.1 mm (2.60") |
67.94 mm (2.67) |
63 mm (2.48") |
| Depth |
9.3 mm ( 0.37") |
8.49 mm (0.33") |
8.94 mm (0.35") |
10.99 mm (0.43") |
| Weight |
140 g (4.9 oz) |
115 g (4.06 oz) |
135 g (4.8 oz) |
127 g (4.5 oz) |
| CPU |
Apple A5 @ ~800MHz Dual Core Cortex A9 |
1.2 GHz Exynos 4210 Dual Core Cortex A9 |
1.2 GHz Dual Core Cortex-A9 OMAP 4460 |
1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z2460 with HT (1C2T) |
| GPU |
PowerVR SGX 543MP2 |
ARM Mali-400 |
PowerVR SGX 540 @ 304 MHz |
PowerVR SGX 540 @ 400 MHz |
| RAM |
512MB LPDDR2-800 |
1 GB LPDDR2 |
1 GB LPDDR2 |
1 GB LPDDR2 @ 400 MHz |
| NAND |
16GB, 32GB or 64GB integrated |
16 GB NAND with up to 32 GB microSD |
16/32 GB NAND |
16 GB NAND |
| Camera |
8 MP with LED Flash + Front Facing Camera |
8 MP AF/LED flash, 2 MP front facing |
5 MP with AF/LED Flash, 1080p30 video recording, 1.3 MP front facing |
8 MP with AF/LED Flash, 1080p30 video recording, 1.3 MP front facing |
| Screen |
3.5" 640 x 960 LED backlit LCD |
4.27" 800 x 480 SAMOLED+ |
4.65" 1280x720 SAMOLED HD |
4.03" 1024x600 LED backlit LCD |
| Battery |
Internal 5.3 Whr |
Removable 6.11 Whr |
Removable 6.48 Whr |
Internal 5.4 Whr |
It’s interesting to me that Intel, Qualcomm, and others identified and
went with WSVGA (1024x600) for their reference designs in roughly the
same 4" size. It’s a display form factor that corresponds almost exactly
to 300 PPI, and looks great, but more on that later. The rest of the
X900 is basically what you’d expect for a smartphone of this generation,
and on par with the Android competition that Intel was targeting,
perhaps minus microSD expansion.
The design language of the X900 (and Intel FFRD) is a pretty obvious
nod to the iPhone 4/4S design, complete with chrome ring, similar button
placement, and a few other things. Likewise, the X900 uses a microSIM
whose tray is located on the right side and makes use of an ejector port
and tool. Below that is the X900’s two-stage camera button, and then
speaker port. There’s a matching speaker port on the other side in the
same area.
MicroUSB is located at the very bottom slightly off center, and
microHDMI is on the left side. Up at the top is power/standby and the
standard headphone jack. There’s no real surprises here, and despite
being entirely plastic-clad, the X900 feels pretty decent in the hand.
The backside is a soft touch material which we’ve seen and felt on
countless other smartphones before. The only downside to the X900 design
is lack of a user replaceable battery - the backside is permanently
attached. At the top is the 8 MP camera port, adjacent LED flash, and
secondary microphone for noise suppression.
The front of the X900 is likewise pretty standard fare, up top are the
1.3 MP front facing camera, speaker grille, ambient light sensor, and
proximity sensor. At the bottom are the four Android capacitive buttons
whose design mirrors the FFRD we’ve seen before.
Again there’s nothing super crazy about the design or construction of
the X900, it’s an extremely polished reference designed turned consumer
electronic that feels solid and ready for use as a daily driver if
you’re up for it. Enough about the superficial stuff though, let’s talk
about what everyone wants to know about - Medfield and Android on x86.
