Lava Xolo X900 Review - The First Intel Medfield Phone
by Brian Klug on April 25, 2012 6:00 AM ESTCellular Performance
Cellular connectivity on the X900 is courtesy Intel’s Infineon acquisition, and uses the popular XMM6260 / X-Gold 626 baseband that we have seen in numerous other HSPA+ smartphones, including Galaxy S II and Galaxy Nexus, among others. Obviously Intel/Infineon knows how to implement its own baseband, and has done so in the device. The X900 is thus limited to GSM/UTMS for its air interfaces. The interesting part is that it’s another one of the pieces of the puzzle which Intel has in its portfolio for eventual inclusion in some upcoming SoC, and on the other hand is a major component built for an Intel phone not at an Intel fab, instead at TSMC on their 40nm process for baseband and 65nm CMOS for the UE2 transceiver, with an ARM11 at its core.
I mention these things since it’s one of the next areas that Intel will need to work on - both taping out its existing designs on its own 32nm or 22nm processes for manufacture at Intel fabs, and eventually making this another x86 powered device. Eventually baseband tasks will be de-elevated from something existing on essentially its own discrete SoC to just another task for a hypervisor to shuffle around on the main multicore SoC.
| Lava Xolo X900 - Network Support | |||||
| GSM/EDGE Support | 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | ||||
| WCDMA Support | 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz | ||||
| Baseband Hardware | Intel/Infineon X-Gold 626 / SMARTi UE2 Transceiver | ||||
| HSPA Speeds | HSDPA 21.1 (Cat.14) / HSUPA 5.76 (Cat.6) - 3GPP Rel.7 | ||||
Anyhow back to the X900 - it’s a quad band WCDMA and GSM/EDGE device, with support for everything but AWS basically. That’s good enough for HSPA+ on almost everything except those on carriers who run AWS. X-Gold 626 supports 64QAM on the forward link, meaning HSDPA up to category 14 / 21.1 Mbps. The reverse link has basically stayed the same for a while now on WCDMA at category 6 / 5.76 Mbps. In addition the device supports 3GPP Release 7 features which makes it HSPA+. The X900 also implements WCDMA receive diversity.
I went ahead and ran just short of 100 tests using the trusty speedtest.net app on the X900 in my AT&T market which runs WCDMA on PCS 1900 MHz.
At this point HSPA+ 14.4 on AT&T is fairly well understood, running these is more validation that there’s nothing wrong with cellular on the device, and unsurprisingly there isn’t - again Intel knows how to implement its own baseband without issue, and with good performance.
WiFi
For WiFi and Bluetooth, the X900 uses a TI WiLink WL1271 series 6 combo chip which supplies 802.11b/g/n single spatial stream on 20 MHz channels with the short guard interval rate of 72 Mbps, and bluetooth 2.1 + EDR support. Some of the Intel documentation shows a TI WL1283 being used (which is WL 7.0 and includes a GPS baseband) and I don’t doubt that other Medfield platforms may implement WL128x or even WiLink 8 series with GNSS, however the X900 is definitely WL1271.
In our WiFi test which consists of a 100 MB PDF loaded over an 802.11n network, the WL1271 does pretty well, just as expected.
GPS
Like the TI WiLink series part, it seems that some Medfield designs include the WiLink 7 series with a GPS basbeand, and others include the more common SiRF Star 4 GSD4t GPS which we have seen in a ton of different smartphones, again including many Samsung phones.
I have no complaints with the GPS lock speed or quality on the X900, it’s speedy and accurate, and works well. I navigated around town with the device and never encountered any problems.
NFC
The X900 also includes NFC support, courtesy the ubiquitous NXP PN544 controller. The smartphone also includes the stock tag reader application, though NFC ships disabled. I tested it on the NFC tag sent with the Nexus S an eternity ago and it worked perfectly.
It’s safe to assume that with the Android 4.0 update beaming will be enabled.
Voice and Speakerphone
The X900 includes some common mode noise suppression components, including a primary and secondary microphone and an Audience eS305 voice processor.
We’ve seen the A102x series in devices before, including the Nexus One, iPhone 4, and numerous other popular smartphones. The reality is that good noise rejection so the far end hears nothing of the ambient sound around you is important both for making calls sound better, and also for increasing the idle or blanking periods on the reverse link. The X900 is my first time hearing the eS305 in action, and to test we did what we normally do by placing a call in front of some speakers, increasing volume, and speaking into the handset while recording the call on the far end on another handset.
I can’t emphasize enough that during the most taxing parts of this recording, I cannot hear myself speak at all. eS305’s performance is great, just like we’ve seen with their other solutions in devices where we’re able to identify its presence. The reality is also that using an array of microphones and some common mode noise rejection is basically the status quo for a high end smartphone right now.
Speakerphone on the X900 is split between the two bottom speaker jacks, and isn't quite as loud as I'd like. We measured as usual with an Extech digital sound data logger 3 inches above the device.
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diulaylomochohai - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Where are the numbers for HTC 1X and 1S??? Let see how much INTC is off from latest and greatest from NVDA and QCOM???dwade123 - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
Intel proves x86 can compete. With Intel's engineering and manufacturing advantages, Intel may soon surpass ARM in just about everything in the future. I still remember those who thinks ARM's transition to desktop is a threat to the entirety of Intel. Nope. It's the other way around. Intel is invading the low wattage CPU arena. Hate them or love them. The future is Intel.jwcalla - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
I lol'd.jwcalla - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
Apple just crapped out $12 billion in pure profit in just the last quarter. That's over 4x the profit that Intel saw, and Apple had almost 4x as much total revenue as Intel.The iCraze is in full song and Android is right up there with them. The masses don't care about x86 on a smartphone. And they're not going to. They want the iShiny. Only the dinosaurs that are hooked into these mythical "necessary" legacy x86 mobile apps are going to care about an Intel phone or tablet. And they're going to want them sporting a turbo button and USB-powered 5.25" floppy drive.
pheadland - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
Small correction: I know Samsung says the GS2 only takes 32GB SD cards, but numerous people, including me, have 64GB SDXC cards working just fine in their GS2s (and many other Android phones).This trend to omit SD expansion and provide only 16GB built-in is puzzling and annoying. I have around 40GB of music. TV shows and movies can run multiple GB each. Streaming just doesn't cut it in rural areas or on planes.
phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Have you put more than 32 GB of data on that 64 GB card, to make sure it's actually able to use all of it? Just curious, more than anything.Exophase - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
In the article you say that the translations are taken from Intel's servers in order to avoid the overhead of doing it on the phone. I doubt this is true, because based on Intel's publications the translation in its current state isn't that sophisticated and unless it is very poorly coded there's no way it'd be slower to do it on the device than pull it off the network.I think the real reason they did this is so they can improve the translation quality w/o updating the phones. Part of this could include hand optimizing hot spots or fixing incompatibilities in some of the more problematic games. Maintaining a database of program specific modifications on every phone would not be a good move.
The article had some good information but I'm disappointed in the total lack of attention given to games. In the big list of apps that work fine I could only spot one game. For comparison, S|A tried two games - both worked, but one of them had awful performance. The phone game market is huge right now and it'd be nice to see someone try several - dozens, perhaps? - of games on the unit. But if they don't, the review should at least indicate that it's not focusing on it. With reviews like this it feels like phone gaming is almost completely devalued, which is bizarre given that several GPU benchmarks are performed, and GPU performance benefits little more than gaming.
Of course, the battery life tests also don't address gaming. The iPhone 4S review had at least one gaming test (for something really resource intensive) so it's not like there's zero precedent for it.
The big open questions for Intel putting x86 phones have never been if they can implement competitive GPUs or media blocks or even if they can have very low power consumption when there's low CPU activity. These things are obvious and Intel has already proven themselves on all of these fronts. What people want to know, or at least what I want to know, is what the power consumption is like when the CPU is being heavily accessed. In other words, I want an idea of perf/W. Talk time tests use a negligible amount of CPU. Browser tests use an unknown amount of CPU - it could be literally anything depending on what sites you use and how the idle parameters are tuned. I'd love to see some CPU utilization + frequency graphics during this test. But suffice it to say, if you're trying to simulate the user browser experience it'll consists of small periods of heavy activity while pages are loaded and vast periods of low activity while the user reads what's on the page.
This is totally different from at least a lot of games, where the CPU constantly has to do something. This both increases the average frequency it has to operate in and gives it less time to go from full idle to full activity.
At the very least it'd be nice to see some video playback battery tests. This (ideally) doesn't use much CPU either, and I'm sure Medfield does just fine here, but it's at least an important use case that should be validated. When you're on an airplane I'm sure you won't be using your phone for talking or web browsing.
kuroxp - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
say sorry! see updates. :Dsjprg2 - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
Are all the cell phone makers STUPID? Where is the hands free bluetooth support with caller ID such as the Motorola V750 has? These are supposed to be phone! You can't drive in Califorina with the existing smartphones. They are not legal!derodg - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
You people are forgetting one very important thing here. This is x86 device! I should in theory be able to run any x86 compatible OS. Which includes Windows 8 that has a touch interface. This means I could dock my phone to a larger display use a keyboard and mouse. Then pick it up an walk out the door and use the same device.And once they get dual-cores in the Atom. Not only can I just buy one app. I can use it on my desktop and mobile device because they both would be the same.