ZTE Grand X IN: New Intel Medfield Based Smartphone Coming to Europe

ZTE is announcing a new smartphone today, the Grand X IN. It's their first Intel based smartphone, and it makes use of the same Medfield platform we reviewed back in April. That means there's a single core Intel Atom Z2640 inside clocked at 1.6 GHz, with hyper-threading enabled of course, 1 GB of RAM, and Intel's XMM 6260 baseband, which provides 21 Mbps HSPA+. Unlike other Intel based smartphones that failed to deviate from the Intel reference design, ZTE has performed several modifications. The two most noteworthy here are the screen and the actual design.

Starting with the screen, Intel's reference platform ships with a 4.03 inch 1024 x 600 pixel LCD display. ZTE decided to swap that out and go with a 4.3 inch 960 x 540 pixel LCD display. And as for the design, Intel's reference platform was pretty much a perfect rectangle for all intents and purposes. Here ZTE has chosen to add some much needed curves. Without seeing the phone in person it's difficult to judge how handsome it looks, but we'd say it's somewhat similar to the Samsung Nexus S.

As for the other specs, there's an 8 megapixel rear facing camera, a 0.3 megapixel front facing camera, the battery holds 1,650 mAh, and curiously enough the GSM radio on-board isn't quadband. You get support for 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz, so don't expect to take this thing to America. On the 3G front you're looking at support on the 900 MHz and 2100 MHz bands.

And finally, the Grand X IN measures 127 mm x 65 mm x 9.9 mm; it also weighs 140.8 grams. Expect this device to hit Europe next month running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Pricing is unknown.