Intel Shows off future smartphone at the CES

Intel CEO Paul Otellini demonstrated that his company still has new tricks up it’s sleeves at 2010’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Among these was a new LG smartphone whose features included the ability to run a movie in 1080p resolution on a 5-inch widescreen using Intel’s Moorestown, an Atom based SoC (System on a Chip.) This platform is purported to outperform TWO of ARM’s Cortex A9 cores. Whether or not this was simple bluster or posturing remains to be seen when devices with the Moorestown chipset are more readily available, as the LG990 is not slated to hit the market until the second quarter of 2010. The odds seem pretty good in Intel’s favor though, as the LG smartphone was able to play high-definition video at the same time as it ran a calendar application, a task some desktop PC’s fall short of being able to do. Intel also gave in-depth demos of another similar Moorestown-architecture smartphone built by Aava.

According to the company, the Moorestown platform will consume up to half of the power in active usage mode than its predecessors. It includes a power-efficient Atom processor, which has a 3D graphics accelerator, integrated memory controller, and other components, all housed on one chip. Intel is jumping into the smartphone market in a big way.