Lenovo will be the first manufacturer to ship a smartphone with Intel's Medfield processor, a surprise considering the firm's lack of experience in the handheld market.

The K800 is a large high-end device that sports an angular frame, much like Lenovo's ThinkPad range. One of the best features is the 4.5in display with a resolution of 1280x720. We found the video playback was very vibrant and the screen was a good size.

With a thickness of 10mm, the device appears quite chunky compared to other handsets on the market such as the Samsung Galaxy S II and the forthcoming Huawei Ascend PS 1.

The K800 was running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with a unique overlay. On first glance it didn't even look like the device was running Android. However, we found this to be quite user friendly. Lenovo expects to upgrade the device to Ice Cream Sandwich.

On the home screen there are shortcuts that allow you to access calls, messages, IMs and mails. In the middle is an icon to view contacts. It's not too fancy, and there are options to customise this so we like it. However, questions will remain over how the overlay will impact battery performance. From experience we have seen overlays such as HTC Sense drain a lot of juice.

Performance of the device was very snappy with the Intel Atom Medfield chip running at 1.6GHz and providing more than enough grunt to power applications.
Lenovo provides 16GB of internal memory, but it looks like there wil not be any micro SD support.

It remains to be seen whether the K800 will make it to western markets. We can't help but feel that Intel's reference smartphone is more likely to make an appearance in the UK than this device.

LAS VEGAS: Intel's prototype smartphone is not as eye-catching as some of the other devices on display at CES, but is a positive step for the chip manufacturer as it has yet to find its feet in the mobile market.

The Intel design looked like a cross between an iPhone 4S and a Samsung Galaxy S II. Weighing in at around the 130g mark, the device felt lighter and had a block design. Although it was far from ugly, it didn't look as sleek as the Huawei Ascend PS 1, unveiled earlier at the show.

The Intel prototype device boasted a 4.03in display a 1024x600 resolution, but the key factor was that the Android handset was running on a 32nm X86-based chip in the form of the Intel Atom Z2460 Medfield processor 1.6GHz single core processor.

Performance of the handset was smooth thanks to the Intel's graphics media accelerator for video and all Android apps ran on the device. It will be interesting to see just how fast real world performance is compared to dual-core devices.

We had a quick play with Modern Combat 2 and the device rendered detailed backgrounds with minimal lag.

On the back was an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p capabilities, and a 1.3-megapixel snapper was located on the front for video calling. The device also included micro-USB and HDMI connections. Additional features included a dedicated camera button, volume rockers and most interestingly, a micro-SIM slot.

Intel is not expected to bring this to market on its own - the design is just a "reference point" for manufacturers. A manufacturer partnership announcement is expected to be made by Paul Otellini during his keynote, which starts at 4:30(PST)/12:30am(GMT).

AUSTIN: There were a number of interesting products on display at Dell World, including Digital Signage concept from Intel and a digital forensics police car from Dell.

Intel's concept features an interactive primary screen, so the device carries out a quick facial scan and displays products based on gender when a customer approaches it.

When a male approaches the screen, the device automatically displays products such as razor blades, for example. Users can interact with products via hand gestures, allowing them to bring up additional information, product reviews and related items.

The secondary screens are built in behind a shelf and are more likely to be incorporated into supermarket aisles. When a product is picked up, the display changes to provide additional information and reacts via an RFID tag on the bottom of a product.

The whole system is powered by Intel's forthcoming Ivy Bridge chipset. The processor used was a quad-core, eight-thread chip with a clock speed of 3GHz.

Primary uses would be in supermarkets aisles and in place of advertising billboards and kiosks. The device is able to gather viewership metrics such as gender and dwell time of the viewer anonymously, and retailers can view these metric in real time and change display products.

Meanwhile, Dell displayed a police car with a removable Dell XFR rugged laptop. Forensic software is pre-loaded on the laptop, allowing officers to extract data from devices and smartphones at crime scenes.

The system helps officers to shift through the vast amounts of data that suspects may have, explained Joe Trickey, rugged mobility and digital forensics marketing manager at Dell.

"Most people have 2.2TB of information. If you look at a typical police investigation, there may be a number of suspects and they have to process all that data," he told V3.

"The digital forensics software allows officers to check devices at the scene of a crime and determine what needs to be investigated further and what can be excluded. It is easier for forensic analysts to process 400GB of data, for example, and data can be processed faster, allowing quicker investigations."

Trickey noted that it is likely that digital forensic kits will be available on smartphones in the future with the advancement in mobile space. He also joked that officers may get a car like the one displayed on the show floor.

Earlier this week, I wrote a story about Intel touting the security benefits of its new Sandy Bridge client systems, especially laptops based on the new Core processors.

Most people are by now familiar with the Anti-Theft technology that allows a lost or stolen laptop to be remotely locked, but the Intel Identity Protection Technology (Intel IPT) is perhaps less well known.

Intel IPT effectively embeds the capabilities of a security token, such as those issued by RSA (shown in the picture), into the laptop itself, doing away with the need for companies to issue tokens to all employees.

But if the technology becomes widespread, it will offer online services, especially banks, a way of securely authenticating customers without having to dream up elaborate security systems or issue costly chip-and-PIN terminals to customers, as has been suggested in the past.

Once a user has registered with an online service, their laptop can use Intel IPT to generate a one-time password (OTP) every time they need to access their account. The user typically does not even need to type this in, as you would with a security token.

Because the system uses a OTP to authenticate the user each time, a fraudster cannot break into their account just by tricking them into revealing their credentials, or getting hold of their user name by infecting PCs with malware.

Sadly, this scenario doesn't seem likely to happen because, while Intel IPT is built into every Core vPro system aimed at businesses, it isn't standard across the entire Core platform, which covers the processors and chipsets that find their way into consumer systems.

If Intel really wants to see Intel IPT adopted as a standard for authenticating users online, the company needs to make it standard across all its new systems.