The ZTE Geek has to be one of the strangest named devices I’ve seen. Yes most of us are all geeks and the name will appeal to some, surely they could have come up with something a little better, maybe “Grand S Memo IN” or something.
ZTE have today announced the ZTE GEEK, which is the first ZTE smartphone powered by Intel’s new 32nm Atom™ processor Z2580, at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing, China.
As to be expected ZTE are excited about the latest device. ZTE EVP and Head of the Mobile Devices Division, Mr. He Shiyou had the following to say.
“Our recent collaboration with Intel on the ZTE GEEK builds on the success of the Grand Series and further enhances our competitiveness in the high-end smartphone market,”
He then added.
“This partnership will also improve customer experiences by providing them with more choices in the market.”
Spec wise it seems that the Geek is going to be a Grand Memo with an Intel chip. Here are the specs.
- 5-inch HD screen
- Resolution of up to 1280×720
- Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
- 8GB eMMC
- 1 GB RAM
- 8-megapixel rear camera
- 1-megapixel front camera
- LED supplement light
- 2300mAh battery
- Intel 32nm Atom™ processor Z2580, frequency 2.0GHZ.
I’m quite interested in these next generation Intel chips for phones. The battery savings could be really something special, although the mid range spec and usual struggle to obtain a ZTE device in the UK may prove too much for me and this phone. No pictures yet, I’ll update the article if and when ZTE send us some.
Interesting stuff – I always wonder how well that Atom based phone Orange released a while back did. Not well I presume. Also, I would be highly surprised if this chip showed any particular power saving over the ARM equivalents used today. I know for a fact Apple’s A6 uses a 32nm process too. The forthcoming 22nm process chips should present a reasonable improvement in power consumption, but they are a way off, and no doubt the likes of Samsung will get there before Intel in the mobile market.
I also wonder if the Jelly Bean 4.2 build for x86 is quite as well tested as the ARM version? No doubt this causes trouble with at least a few Apps too (the likes of Sky Go in particular), even though most of them are well enough abstracted from base OS.
Apart from anything else, I just hope they supply it easily rooted and customisable, as I think this is what the ‘Geeks’ will like to play with. I bet we’ll see clips on YouTube of some clever cloggs running Windows XP on it.