Intel Corp. and Lava International, one of India’s fastest-growing mobile handset companies, on Thursday said that Xolo X900, the first smartphone with Intel Atom Z2460 inside, will be available to customers for purchase beginning 23^rd April at a street price of approximately INR22000, or €320/$422.

“Through Xolo X900, we are happy to bring to the Indian market a device that addresses the needs of those for whom speed and performance matters. [...] The initial reviews of Xolo X900 have been very positive and independent benchmarks clearly point to the fact that when it comes to speed and performance, Xolo X900 is the gold standard,” said Vishal Sehgal, co-founder and director of Lava International.

The Xolo X900 is based on Intel’s smartphone reference design, which is based on Atom Z2460 system-on-chip (Atom core at 1.60GHz, PowerVR-based graphics core with OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL 2.1, OpenVG 1.1 support clocked at 400MHz with hardware accelerated high-definition 1080p video playback, 32-bit LPDDR2 memory controller and so on) supporting 3G/HSPA+ with the Intel XMM 6260 communication processor. The reference design smartphones have 4.03" screens, 8MP cameras and use Google Android 4.0 operating system. The Xolo X900 will initially come with Android 2.3 operating system with a planned over-the-air software upgrade to Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" platform shortly. Intel declares up to 5 hours of 3G browsing, 45 hours of audio and 8 hours of talk time.

“The first smartphone with Intel inside is now available to Indian consumers. The boundaries of personal computing are expanding. As we enter the India market with our first smartphone from Lava, the device not only showcases the rich capabilities and user benefits of Intel computing, but also highlights the exciting possibilities of what’s still to come,” said Mike Bell, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the mobile and communications group.

Intel's path to smartphones has been extremely long and thorny. After dumping its ARM-based Xscale product division in 2006, the company has been attempting to crack the markets of smartphones and tablets since 2008. The world's largest maker of chips now expects several other companies, including Motorola Mobility/Google and Lenovo Group, to reveal their smartphones based on own designs and Intel reference design in Q2 2012.

Tags: Intel, Medfield, Atom, Android, Lava