What to expect from Intel Atom X3 smartphone chips

Intel has been aggressively rolling out its new low-cost, low-power Atom chips for smartphones this last quarter and we’re expecting the likes of Asus to use the Atom X3 in upcoming Zenfones.

While the Atom X3 shares the same name as the Atom X5 and X7, the former actually belongs to a different category.

Only the Atom X3 is targeted to affordable smartphones and there are actually 3 types of them. The first two are already in production (3G and 3G R) and will probably appear in new Android phones any time soon.

For the meantime, the X3 3G and X3 3G R variants will be used to compete with Mediatek and Qualcomm.

Both these X3 chips will have built-in 3G connectivity embedded in the system. The X3 3G will be a dual-core chip with 1.0GHz speed for each core paired with a Mali 400MP2 GPU. The 3G R will be much better clocking in with a quad-core processor running 1.2GHz paired with a Mali450 MP4.

The Android phones running these chips will sports either DD2 or DDR3 RAM between 1GB to 2GB per handset. These phones will be priced around Php4,000USD 68INR 5,778EUR 65CNY 496 for the dual-core and around Php8,000USD 136INR 11,557EUR 130CNY 993 for the quad-core. It could be possible we’re bee seeing a variant of the Zenfone 2 running the Atom X3-3G R with the price range of the ZE500CL which is about Php7,000USD 119INR 10,112EUR 114CNY 869 while the cheaper version of the Zenfone C running the X3-3G.

In terms of performance and capabilities, we’re looking at the Atom X3 to be a bit better than the Snapdragon 200 and close tot he Snapdragon 400 chips from Qualcomm.

It would be interesting if indeed the Atom X3 would hold up to its promise.