UPDATED 09:47 EDT / JANUARY 11 2012

Intel Unveils New Phone But Fumbles IvyBridge Demo at CES

Intel was dead serious when they announced that they trying their luck in the mobile sector.  At this year’s CES, Intel CEO Paul Otellini debuted  a new Intel phone made by Lenovo.  This isn’t the first Intel phone to make headlines, since they already revealed one back in 2010 with LG, but the device never made it to market.  And their Meego effort was dumped by Nokia for Windows Phone.

Lenovo senior vice president Liu Jun introduced the Lenovo K800 smartphone, a 10mm-thin handheld device that features an 8-megapixel camera, NFC technology for mobile payments, and eight hours of 3G talk time.  The Lenovo K800 is running on an unspecified Intel Atom processor, Intel’s new Reference Design which is touted to be more energy efficient, and it will incorporate security features courtesy of Intel-acquired McAfee.

Aside from Lenovo, Intel also announced a partnership with Motorola Mobility to produce more Intel-based smartphones and even tablets.  The first Motorola-Intel smartphone is targeted to launch by the second half of 2012.

“It’s the coming out party for Medfield,” Mike Bell, general manager of Intel’s newly formed mobile and communications group, told Fortune in an interview. “People kept asking us if Intel can play in this space and our message was yes, but until we show something it doesn’t get driven home for people.”

Demo Boo-boo

Intel also demoed the IvyBridge in an Ultrabook with touchscreen.  Intel thin kit was time the touchscreen technology crossed over to Ultrabooks.

“Touch skipped the notebook, skipped the Ultrabook. It was dedicated to phones, it was dedicated to tablets,” Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group told his audience on Monday morning at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. “It’s not going to skip the Ultrabook any more.”

Some people at Intel were very skeptic about this, but nevertheless, Eden thought they had to push boundaries in order to matter.  This isn’t really anything new as there are some desktop PCs with touchscreens already on the market, so I don’t really know what the big fuss was about.  Besides, the Asus Transformer Prime already has that covered.

Intel demoed the IvyBridge  to display the graphics capability of the system in running the DirectX11 software.  But here’s the catch: the Formula One driving game demo was fake, Eden pretended to play the game but eventually gave up and stated that it was being run from behind the scenes by the crew.

“It’s still a DX11 and I want all of you to see because people were criticizing us, saying when where we going to deliver it? We are delivering it,” Eden said.

In a pathetic attempt to explain the incident, Intel resorted to the “It was a last minute addition,” excuse.

“Because the demonstration was added at the last minute and because the game takes a couple of minutes to load and Eden was pressed for time, the video was shown versus a live demo,” Intel told The Register in a statement.

If that wasn’t embarassing enough, people were expecting Intel to unveil an Intel tablet since everyone seems to be launching or launched a tablet.  So even if they took a step closer in invading the mobile realm, without a tablet, they’re further away from dominating this sector.


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