Intel – about to make their triumphant entry into the smartphone world?

A tip of the hat, first of all, to SteveTheGeek, who spotted this story before me, and commented on the Samsung blog post I did yesterday. Ta for the heads-up, dude!

When you look at the modern smartphone world, there are myriad different smartphone operating systems on display (well, alright, let’s not go overboard, there’s about six). There’s definitely a nice diversity of interfaces out there, and a whole load of platforms for them to run on. Well, according to GSMArena, the smartphone world is about to get a bit more diverse, as computer giants Intel are soon going to be wading into the fray.

And their strategy for market domination? A combination of their newest, bestest chip (Moorestown) and their newest, bestest Linux-based UI (Moblin). To understand fully what that means, let’s take a look at the separate elements of this Moorestown/Moblin mega-mashup.

First up, Moorestown; what we’ve got here is another SoC, or system-on-chip, if you like typing out the full version of its name. Basically, think of it as a main processor that’s more than just a main processor. yes, an actual CPU is a main part of it (in this case, it’s the Intel Atom chip), but it’s more than just that.

It’s also got, on the chip itself, graphics and video encoding/decoding, and memory controllers. In effect, it means one chip will handle the work that loads of different chips used to have to do.

And that’s important, since it means that: 1/ it’ll take up less room inside the phone, letting the phone be physically smaller; and 2/ it’ll draw significantly less power than separate bits, so your battery’ll last longer.

Oh, and let’s not forget that Atom processors are available up to 2GHz. A 2GHz chip in my phone? Don’t mind if I do!

However, the second part of the tech double-header is arguably more important, from a user standpoint. ‘Cos, like, it’s the actual interface you use to actually interact with the phone. And it’s called Moblin. What it actually is, though, is a variant of Linux, putting it squarely alongside the likes of Maemo (seen on the Nokia N900) and Android (used, as you well know, on phones like the HTC Hero and the upcoming Motorola DEXT). Hence, it’s as finger-friendly and sleek as you’d expect.

Here, take a look for yourselves:

Now that looks rather nice.

In terms of timescale, we can expect to see Moorestown/Moblin devices to start appearing some time in 2010, and then, after that, world domination beckons for Intel…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!