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Intel adding Android support to its Atom E6xx processor in January

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Intel’s Atom E6xx series of processors will have Android Gingerbread support and that’s coming in January, 2012. This was uncovered in a video by the world’s largest semiconductor maker, detailing the Atom processor. This means that we may see Android 2.3 ported on all kinds of Atom-based devices like netbooks, tablets and more.

Intel is a high-class player in the CPU business but smartphones are a closed ARM gang and competition will be steep. Not to mention that the timing isn’t exactly perfect as Ice Cream Sandwich is coming in the October/November period Gingerbread will hardly be hot stuff in January 2012. ICS is rumored to bring the best of Android for handhelds and tablets into one awesome OS and it makes more sense for it to be supported instead of Gingerbread.

The cause of this can be that Google hasn’t given Intel the source code of its next mobile OS version. The Intel Atom is based on X86 which is an architecture Android isn’t comfortable on but Google does plan to support it on X86 to a limited extent so that it can work with Atom-based Google TV devices.

Here’s the video itself.

There’s no word yet on specific Atom-using devices that will feature (or dual-boot) Android 2.3 Gingerbread but it isn’t exactly the first time we’ve heard of (or seen) such products. It’s just now gotten official.

Source | Via

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