Motorola Releases Intel-powered RAZR i Smartphone in the UK

Following in the footsteps of Orange, which released the ‘San Diego’ Intel-powered phone this past summer in the UK, Motorola has just announced its ‘RAZR i’, also in the UK. The phone is the first to feature Intel’s latest Atom microarchitecture, Medfield, which means the phone is HyperThreading-enabled. That’s born almost about of necessity, however, as the particular chip to power this phone, Atom Z2480, is a single-core offering. Helping further to negate any lacking performance, the chip operates at 2.0GHz.

CPU aside, the RAZR i has a lot in common with the RAZR m. There’s a 4.3″ Super AMOLED screen “edge-to-edge display” (if that’s important to you for some reason), up to 20 hours of battery-life (based on ‘typical’ daily usage) and an 8-megapixel camera. Because of the fast CPU used, Motorola claims that the camera will launch in under a second, and for those shooting action shots, it can snap 10 photos in rapid succession in under a second.

Aside from that, Motorola is being real coy with the rest of the specs, except to say it comes equipped with Ice Cream Sandwich (updateable to Jelly Bean at a future date). It’s clear that while this is a fast phone, it’s not setting out to compete with the likes of the Galaxy S III or iPhone 4 (or 5). Pricing is said to be about £340 SIM-free, including VAT.

The folks over at The Verge had a quick hands-on with the phone, and from first appearances, the phone is extremely snappy. Isn’t about time, then, that we finally get an Intel phone over on these shores? What’s taking you, Intel?