Intel's x86 Android, smartphone, and tablet plans exposed | Hacker News Reader

Intel's x86 Android, smartphone, and tablet plans exposed

extremetech.com

18 pointsmrsebastian13 comments

This article seems completely oblivious of the fact that the GoogleTV platform (embodied by devices such as the Logitech Revue) is based on an Intel design (and thereby is targeted towards x86).

As this platform has now launched (is now launching?) the Android Market, and (despite Logitech's bowing out) is unlikely to be entirely abandoned by Google (at least in the near future), there is an actual concrete short-term reason why Intel would have strong interests in the Android platform.

It is therefore very difficult to take any of this article's speculations regarding what we might see from "x86-powered smartphones and tablets are concerned" seriously. :(

Yes. Also incorrect in the article is

> Last week, Intel announced that it had added x86 optimizations to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, but the text of the announcement and included quotes were vague and a bit contradictory given the open nature of Android development.

Android is open source (and Google deserves a lot of credit for that), but its development is not open at all. The article seems oddly unaware of that.

I would say that the article is dismissing GoogleTV because it's irrelevant. At this point, GoogleTV is not a successful product. With such a tiny market, GoogleTV definitely does not provide "an actual concrete short-term reason why Intel would have strong interests in the Android platform". At best this would be a long-term interest, if Intel believes that GoogleTV is going to take off.

What I find interesting about this is the Wireless display technology that is going to be on this platform. I think they will push that concept hard. The idea that I can take my phone, sit down at my desk and have it running on the monitor, keyboard and mouse wirelessly ()and hopefully seemlessly) has been a big feature that I have wanted for a while.

I think we're right on the edge of this. Unfortunately so far all the solutions (the Atrix, etc) ended up costing a lot of money just to have the ancillary devices (i.e. dock, etc). If the wireless displays are cheap, and the control interfaces work cheaply as well, it has a chance. Otherwise you are probably better served by having two devices with good syncing.

The scenario you're describing is actually not the one WiDi is targeting. WiDi targets the computer-to-tv scenario. The idea is that you sit on the couch with your laptop or tablet and the audio and video seamlessly transmit to the TV. I think this (or some equivalent scenario) is eventually going to be ubiquitous, whether it's Intel's implementation or not.

The desktop scenario might arrive later, and it might even be doable now, but it's not the target yet.

I hope this is for running android on bigger devices, and not switching smaller devices to intel...

Why? Personally, I'd love to see smartphones and other smaller devices with Intel processors.

Well unless something has recently changed, or will in the future, it usually means more power used, more heat produced, which aren't great things for a handheld device. Kind of like the Windows 8 tablet with a fan...

I wouldn't unless people figure out how to keep them from getting uncomfortably warm.

Let me break it down..

Android SDK: -Intel improved the x86 emulation on Mac and Windows by a factor of 10. Android NDK: -Intel patched stuff to optimize and support x86 android devices

Android Market: -Android Market now runs on x86 platforms

Obviously all that is x86 Intel tablets running android..not smartphones. That would be the atom chip series.

I took a look at device trees in Android 4 source.. no device trees for Intel x86 smartphones.

And remember there was an admission by Intel several weeks ago that they will not be in smartphones, chip wise. That dovetails with their work on both MeeGo and Android as Intel is pushing their atom series at tablets not smartphones.

I wouldn't use a smartphone with 8 cores and 4 GB of RAM and a long battery life if the user interface sucks. If Ice Cream Sandwich is mediocre from a usability standpoint, no hardware can save it.

Have a source?

It seems to me that phrases like "from a usability standpoint", are becoming a generic stick to beat things with, and that there's a rush of the Hipsters to be the first to claim that that widely used service X is unusable for some user experience reason.

here's another example

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226223

Reply on news.ycombinator.com