LON­DON-Google's Mo­toro­la Mo­bil­i­ty un­veiled its first smart­phone hand­set to be pow­ered by an In­tel proces­sor yes­ter­day, fea­tur­ing a wide screen and longer-life bat­tery to bet­ter com­pete against Ap­ple's iPhone and Sam­sung. The Razr i will launch in Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Britain, France, Ger­many and Mex­i­co in Oc­to­ber, as the first hand­set of a mul­ti-de­vice agree­ment be­tween the two groups.

With a 4.3-inch dis­play and Google's An­droid plat­form, the Razr i is sim­i­lar to the Razr M un­veiled ear­li­er in Sep­tem­ber for US con­sumers, but its brain is an In­tel proces­sor in­stead of a chip made by Qual­comm. Choos­ing In­tel's chips is un­usu­al in the smart­phone and tablet in­dus­try, where en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient proces­sors made by Qual­comm and Sam­sung us­ing tech­nol­o­gy li­censed by British group ARM Hold­ings are wide­ly favoured.

In­tel dom­i­nates the PC in­dus­try but has been slow to adapt its pow­er­ful proces­sors to work well in bat­tery-sen­si­tive mo­bile gad­gets and is now rush­ing to catch up. Mo­toro­la's An­drew Mor­ley, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Britain and Ire­land, said the new chip en­abled users to switch quick­ly be­tween ac­cess­ing the web, play­ing games, send­ing texts and ac­ti­vat­ing the cam­era. The screen has vir­tu­al­ly no bor­der, so it al­so com­pares well in size to oth­er ri­vals.

Reuters