CES 2013: Lenovo shows off the first Intel-powered Clover Trail+ Android smartphone

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

One of the biggest stories to come out of CES 2013 is Intel's commitment to provide low-power processors for smartphones and tablets. An area where the desktop and notebook chipmaker has traditionally fallen short.

Lenovo seems to be leading the pack with the first Intel-powered Android smartphone. The Clover Trail + processor is derived from the Atom line of mobile processors (descendants of the low power chips that powered Netbooks a few years back).

The K900 is an important device (even if it isn't coming to North America, being a China-exclusive handset), because it shows the emergence of Intel as a mobile chipmaker as well as Lenovo as a viable competitor in the mobile space. Lenovo also released the K800 which was an Intel powered device as weill using an older Haswell processor.

The K900 has a stunning 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display covered in Gorilla Glass 2, it has a 13-megapixel F1.8 camera with dual LED flash, and a front-facing camera designed for video chats with an 88-degree super wide viewing angle.

Memory is 2GB of RAM and with 16GB of storage. Except for the paltry onboard storage, all the specs of the K900 are skirting flagship smartphone territory, If it were released In Canada or the US it would be go toe-to-toe with most of today's leading smartphones. We'll keep following the K900 as well as Intel's Clover Trail + processor as it develops.

Photos by Alex Davies