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.

12 Jan 2012