Intel Corp. and Orange said this week that the latter will begin to sell Europe's first "Intel Inside" smartphone called San Diego on June 6, 2012. The phone is based on Intel's reference design for Atom Z2460-powered smartphones, but features a number of Orange-exclusive capabilities. The San Diego will be available for free with contract or for £199.99 in case of pay-as-you-go.

"We are proud to be working with such an exciting partner as Intel, and offering our customers the first Orange Intel powered smartphone on the market. The San Diego is a great addition to our own-branded device portfolio, and is testament to our heritage in offering consumers great value innovation," said Paul Jevons, director of products and devices at Orange UK.

The San Diego will be available from 6th June from Orange shops, Orange telesales and the Orange online store. The San Diego will be available for £199.99 on Orange Pay As You Go, when customers top up by £10 in Orange shops. When they take out the handset on pay as you go, they will also receive a free monthly allowance of 250Mb of mobile data per month for 12 months. Alternatively, for launch, the handset will be free to customers who take a 24 month price plan from £15.50 a month until the 25th of July 2012. The package includes 50 any network call minutes, 50 texts, as well as 100MB of mobile data a month.

The Orange San Diego is based on Intel’s smartphone reference design, which is powered by 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) as well as Intel XMM 6260 communication processor that supports GSM, WCDMA, 3G/HSPA+ and other standards. The reference design smartphones have 4.03" screens, 8MP back cameras, front cameras and use Google Android 4.0 operating system. Intel declares up to 5 hours of 3G browsing, 45 hours of audio and 8 hours of talk time.

From the home screen, the San Diego will come with quick link access to:

• Orange Wednesdays: 2-4-1 cinema ticket app – allowing you to read reviews, watch trailers as well as redeem 2-4-1 vouchers all from your handset;
• Your Orange: To help customers keep up to date and manage their Orange account;
• Orange Gestures: Allowing users to draw natural and intuitive gestures on their home screen which can give one-stroke access to their favourite applications or services.

Tags: Orange, Atom, Intel, Medfield, San Diego