Intel Renames Orange Santa Clara to Orange San Diego, Launches June 6
by Brian Klug on May 31, 2012 6:44 PM ESTBy now everyone should be fairly familiar with Intel's smartphone strategy - by partnering with both carriers and handset vendors, Intel hopes to quickly carve out a niche of the smartphone market and demonstrate a commitment to x86 for phones and tablets. The partners so far include Lenovo with the K800, Motorola with upcoming devices, and Lava with the Xolo X900. We've already taken a look at the Lava Xolo X900 device, which was based around the first iteration of Intel's FFRD (Form Factor Reference Device) and came away pretty impressed with Intel's first phone.
| Intel Smartphone Comparison | |||||
| Device | Lava Xolo X900 | Orange San Diego | |||
| SoC | Intel Atom Z2460 w/ 1GB LPDDR2 PoP DRAM | ||||
| Baseband | Intel XMM 6260 | ||||
| NAND | 16GB | ||||
| Dimensions | 123mm x 63mm x 10.99mm | 123mm x 63mm x 9.99mm | |||
| Weight | 127g | 117g | |||
| OS | Android 2.3.x (4.0.x upgrade available OTA) | ||||
The news today is about the Medfield device headed to Orange, which was previously codenamed Santa Clara and now formally named San Diego. Intel and Orange announced some availability details, including a launch date of June 6th, and pricing which is 199.99 GBP on Orange's pay as you go plan, or free with a 2 year contract. Orange's San Diego includes the same Intel Z2460 SoC and Intel XMM 6260 HSPA+ baseband we've seen before.
The Medfield platform here hasn't changed at all, but the San Diego does include a thinner form factor and some Orange-specific industrial design tweaks such as a rounded edge profile. The difference is subtle but made a definite difference in in-hand feel when last we played with it. The last we saw the San Diego was at MWC, where we snapped some photos of the device side by side with the traditional FFRD.
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sciwizam - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link
Hmm...name change from Intel's HQ of Santa Clara to Qualcomm's HQ of San Diego...hmm.greylica - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link
I hope we could get rid of proprietary software in smartphones and tablets. If Atom is the key to get rid of the ARM proprietary instructions, then we are very interested, otherwise, those unreliable smartphones with proprietary software are just another Big Brother eye.chrone - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link
hope the next google nexus version will be powered by intel atom dual-core.it's gonna be legend.. *wait for it* dary!! :D
madooo12 - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link
AMD's hondo should be better based on trinity benchescellpeti - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link
This is very good smartphone, but here(Hungary) very very expensive. :( :(soda tech - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link
I'll tell you what I'm most excited about. Based on the pictures, it looks like there's a hard camera button on the side. I could be wrong, that could be something else, but I love the hard camera button. It makes getting into camera mode and taking pictures, especially self-portraits, much much easier. I don't know why any of the companies ever ditched the hard button, but such an obvious no brainer has become an exception rather than the rule.Does anyone know what possible advantage NOT having a camera button might have?
randinspace - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link
Signal clearance? (e.g. being able to put a radio/antenna somewhere people won't have their hand all the time, the Nokia Lumia 900, with a camera button, has something of an unfortunate configuration in this regard...) Decreased size? Shaving a Renminbi (CNY) or perhaps two off the bill of materials? Shaving another one or two CNY off the shipping costs?