It’s a crossover point when Intel demonstrate a mobile operating system that grew on ARM devices, on their i86 platform and that’s what happened yesterday.

I played around with an image from the Intel pressroom and here’s the Medfield tablet running Honeycomb. Looks like 7” to me and designed for Android 2.x rather than 3.x (See buttons.)

Interestingly, most of the PR around Medfield talks about tablets and not smartphones. I wonder if the smartphone focus will come later in the year? IDF perhaps.

Original image is here.

In around 2hrs, Doug Davies, head of the tablet and netbook division will be holding a session where we expect to hear more about Medfield, Cedar Trail, Android, Meego and more. We’ll bring you that news as soon as we can.

Why is Honeycomb on Intel interesting? See this article.

We’re not quite sure if we’re supposed to have this PDF but it’s just landed in our lap and we don’t see any confidential markings so we might as well relay the info. It’s a slide set from an investor meeting from the Ultra Mobility group and it highlights a few interesting points about Moorestown and Medfield. It appears to be dated 05_2009 so it’s very recent.

Read the full story

I’m very reluctant to be talking about Medfield. It’s the codename for the system-on-chip that Intel are working on for 2011. That’s the next step after Moorestown which is still at least half a year away. We’re still waiting for a bunch of promised Menlow-based devices a year after launch and two years after its first mention here on UMPCPortal so I’m not getting excited.

Moorestown is planned for early 2010 and will push Intel further into the MID category and enable voice-enabled, large-format smartphones. LG have already made an announcement along these lines. The marketing people will tell you about 10x lower platform idle power which works well for standby communicators but means nothing for devices you’re actually using. Menlow brought us swiftly down from the 10W power profile to the 6W power profile so I think it’s fair to say that we’ll be looking at devices operating in a 4W power profile with Moorestown.

The next step for Intel is into small-format smartphones. Phones like the iPhone and the Pre. CNN are giving us a tiny lead into Medfield today with an article that reveals the codename ‘Medfield’ and talks about a single chip design. But there’s not much more detail there at all so that’s all we’re left with. You can try reading between the lines at CNN.com but I’d recommend staying focused on Moorestown first. Computex is in just over 2 weeks so there’s lots of excitement to come before we start getting into the details of Medfield.