The rumors of Intel searching for a buyer were circulating, and it looks like they were true: Intel is selling off their mobile chip arm -- responsible for the quite successful XScale group of processors -- to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. With chips making notable appearances in Treo, Blackberry and HTC devices, and pulling in a reported $250 million in revenue last year, we're still scratching our heads as to why exactly Intel would want to get rid of such a successful portion of their business. We'd think powering smartphones would be a priority for Intel right now, but the word is that Intel will have an option to receive $100 million of the purchase price in Marvell stock, so they might not be out of the game entirely. The chip unit currently employs 1,400 people, and Marvell plans to retain the "vast majority" of them, so this move shouldn't be too traumatic for most parties involved. We just hope they keep up with the R&D to get us smaller, faster, cooler and cheaper chips on the regular.

On paper, the Mio A701 smartphone sounds like almost the perfect convergence device, sporting a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered 520MHz Xscale processor, SiRF III GPS receiver, tri-band GSM radio, Bluetooth, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. Sadly, at least according to Reg Hardware, the A701 has so many little faults that the device is often barely usable, and sounds like a skip except for those folks who absolutely must have GPS and aren't into the square-screened iPaq hw6xxx series from HP. Some of the Reg's gripes with this model include its crappy camera (one of the worst they've ever seen, apparently), GPRS-only data connection, flimsy telescoping stylus, lack of dedicated buttons for WM5 softkey control, and buggy navigation software (luckily it's optional). Besides the full suite of accessories that come included in the box, there doesn't seem to be much good to say about the $660 to $790 A701, which is no doubt a big disappointment to those who may have been looking to import what appeared to be such a hot phone.