There seem to be no stopping Intel when it comes to bashing ARM, as Intel was more than happy to say that the iPhone suffered because of its ARM-based processor and that it would've been a much better device had it had an Atom processor.

During a Q&A session yesterday at IDF Taipei, Pankaj Kedia, who is the director of ecosystems for its ultra-mobility group, said, "The shortcomings of the iPhone have come from ARM," while Shane Wall, who is the VP of Intel's mobility group and director strategic planning, platform architecture and software, ultra-mobility group filled in, "Any sort of application that requires any horse power at all and the iPhone struggles."

There was a lot of talk about the "full" Internet and that only x86 powered devices can offer this. The criticism toward ARM was based on the fact that each ARM core is slightly different and the fact that you need to recompile your software and make some changes for it to run on various ARM cores. With x86 this isn't the case, although, it's interesting that Intel is offering up all sorts of new instruction sets with each new generation of CPUs that requires exactly the same to be done if you want to take advantage of the new features.

Now it seems to us that Intel has forgotten about two things, as walking around at the showcase on the first floor of the TICC where IDF Taipei was held, most of the Atom-powered devices were running hot, some of them even had a small and noisy cooling fan fitted, and none of them seem to have more than a few hours of battery life. The iPhone has great battery life in comparison (despite some user woes) and it doesn't run hot at all.

ARM-based processors might not offer quite the same kind of performance as an Atom processor, but at least you get useable battery life and a device that doesn't require you to wear an oven mitt to use it. We're sure that things will change when Intel launches Moorestown next year, as the new CPU and chipset should run a lot cooler, but for now, Intel doesn't stand much chance in the handheld market, in our opinion.