Who's Behind the Orange London Intel-Based Smartphone?

This year, we'll be seeing Intel-made processors start making a comeback in the smartphone market. Thanks to the CES, we've already had the opportunity to see some of this hardware in action, getting some hands-on time with the Intel-based Lenovo K800. More recently, we learned of Motorola's interest in producing an Android handset also based on Intel silicon. Today we may have another such Intel Android on our hands, supposedly arriving as the London on carrier Orange.

Information on the London was first revealed by an Orange subscriber who had been asked to participate in a survey about future products. As a result, there's no guarantee that the carrier will actually release the phone, especially if it doesn't like what it heard from these survey results, but it's probably a likely outcome.

Orange loves giving phones its own branding; who's the original manufacturer here? It could easily be a ZTE or Huawei model, or even the Lenovo K800 itself; Android buttons aside, it's externally similar to what we saw at the CES.

Supposedly, the Orange London will run a 1.6GHz Intel chip, feature an eight-megapixel camera, include 16GB of on-board storage, and have a 4.03-inch Gorilla Glass screen (which makes us think this might not be the K800, which is supposed to have a 4.5-inch display).

Orange certainly talks-up the London in the text it prepared, describing the phone as being the fastest handset anywhere when it comes to web browsing, and having exceptional camera capabilities. It's all very intriguing, and now has us anxiously waiting to here more about this model. 

ZTE Launches Gingerbread-Powered Light Tab 2 In the U.K.

After recently seeing two affordable Chinon Android tablets being unveiled with Gingerbread on-board, here comes another one, this time from ZTE. The Light Tab 2 is a seven-inch Android tablet which is now available in the U.K. 

For £235 (around $370) you get a Qualcomm MSM8255 processor clocking at 1.4GHz, 4GB of internal memory, 0.3-megapixel webcam, three-megapixel rear camera, microSD card slot and radio for GSM, UMTS, and HSPA network compatibility alongside WiFi. Gingerbread might not be what you're after on a tablet but there is no word on either a Honeycomb or an Ice Cream Sandwich update. 

Clearwire Going LTE; What Does This Mean for Sprint WiMAX?

Sprint 4G service, WiMAX, is offered by means of a partnership with Clearwire, of which Sprint owns a majority stake. Now Clearwire is gearing-up for a big change to its services, announcing today that it will start providing LTE Advanced-ready communications with network links that have demonstrated the capacity for 120Mbps speeds. How will this new direction affect current Sprint customers?

Sprint has already aligned itself with LightSquared for LTE data, announcing plans to work together to build up an LTE network over the next few years. We had assumed that it would maintain separate WiMAX service to offer existing users, and continue to do so as its LTE capacity grew out to do national levels. 

Clearwire, though, is talking about using its existing 2.5GHz spectrum holdings for LTE – the very same area of the spectrum it uses now for WiMAX. Our initial concern would be that as it starts LTE service, that would mean less room available for WiMAX. The company must understand that this concern is out there, as it wrapped-up its LTE announcement by "restating its commitment" to WiMAX and all existing WiMAX users. So, for now, we wouldn't panic, but Sprint users might want to think carefully about which 4G technology their future phone choices use over the next few years.