The world's first Intel-powered smartphone finally went on sale in India on Monday, April 23. The Lava XOLO X900 marks an important milestone for Intel - a crucial first step in the mobile computing world, traditionally dominated by ARM processors.

The partnership with Lava may be just a baby step in joining the smartphone chip segment, but Intel has also announced partnerships with Lenovo, Motorola, ZTE, and Orange to release more Intel-powered smartphones. Lenovo is expected to launch the Lenovo K900 phone in China next month, while European telecom operator Orange may release Santa Clara with Atom processor in June in Europe. Motorola's and ZTE's phones are expected to launch sometime in the second half of 2012.

Specs & Features

Lava's XOLO X900 runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and features a 4.03-inch display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels, an Intel Z2460 single-core chip clocked at 1.6GHz, NFC (near field communication) capabilities, two cameras, and 16GB of internal storage. The company pledged to provide an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich shortly after launch.

The Lava XOLO X900 also supports 1080-pixel HD video playback and offers good battery performance - it lasts up to 45 hours for audio playback, eight hours for talk time and five hours for 3G browsing. It only supports HSPA+ 3G, but this should not be a big problem in India. In addition, Intel said its Medfield platform can support HSPA+ 4G networks as well. The Intel-powered smartphone from Indian manufacturer Lava costs 22,000 INR (approx. $425) without a plan, and is exclusively available online at XOLO.in and in Croma lifestyle stores.

Ready to Compete

"We finally have a very competitive product for smartphones," said Jeff Ross, director of Intel's Marketing for Mobile and Communications Group, in an interview with Wired. "We have a high-performance part that can compete with products in the market, and those coming out to the market. It's not just about the performance, but also about the energy efficiency. There are [a] number of performance factors that we'll be best at."

Intel and its partners have yet to reveal details and specs for the other Intel-powered smartphones, but they are expected to include the Intel Medfield chip, a 400MHz graphics clock, 1080-pixel video encoding and playback, HSPA+ 3G connectivity and other features of Intel's reference design.

All in all, the XOLO X900's specs are not ground-breaking, but are competitive nonetheless, and Intel has made an important step forward towards the mobile computing industry. Intel processors are finally making their way into smartphones, marking the beginning or a new era for the chip maker.

(reported by Alexandra Burlacu, edited by Dave Clark)