LG GW900 mobile phone with Intel Atom Moorestown chip launched

LG GW900, first Moorestown mobile phone launched

Photo: LG GW900 mobile phone

LG GW900, the first LG mobile phone running Intel’s Atom Moorestown chip is ready. Intel CEO Paul Otellini displayed the LG GW900 mobile at the Consumer Electronics Show currently under way in Las Vegas. Moorestown is a new version of Intel’s Atom chip. Intel Atom processors are more usually used in trimmed down notebook computers called Netbooks.

The LG GW900 mobile smartphone comes with a 5-inch touchscreen, which will be the biggest touchscreen in a mobile phone yet. Otellini said at the press meet that the LG GW900 mobile can play back 720p high-definition video. The LG GW900 touchscreen will supports multitouch input. There will be one camera each at the front and the back. The operating system on the LG GW900 is Moblin OS, based on Linux.

LG GW900, and similar other smartphones from LG and other based on Atom Moorestown will roll out this year, said Otellini. Detailed features, specifications and price of the LG GW900 mobile are not available so far.

Intel is a laggard when it comes to powering mobile phones. Apple’s iPhone is powered by Samsung ARM, while BlackBerrys are powered by Qualcomm and ARM. Older BlackBerrys use Intel 80386 processors. Google Nexus One, the latest smartphone in the field, uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz processor. The launch of LG GW900 smartphone powered by Intel’s ATom Moorestown shows Intel’s determined bid to re-enter the mobile handset chip arena which it had surrendered to nimble rivals.

LG had said last year that it will launch a smartphone based on the Moorestown, though it did give any details then. Intel claims that the Moorestown chip which powers the LG GW900 will be more power-efficient than its peers. At a demonstration, the LG GW900 was shown running multiple applications at the same time, a feature which is still not available on the market-leading iPhone.