According to Intel's stats, the reference platform uses a 5.55 Wh battery. The iPhone 4S uses a 5.3 Wh battery so those are pretty comparable.

Other than standby time, which is 360 hours for the reference platform versus the iPhone's 200 hours, the other numbers show no advantage for Intel at all. The reference platform has one hour less talk time, two hours less video watching time and one hour more browsing time.

While the standby time is a big advantage, its the least important one since few people leave their phone on standby for a week without using it or charging it.

There are three smartphone markets that anyone (other than RIM shareholders) think will matter in two years. iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. The first market is likely closed to Intel, the second will be the bulk of the market, and for the third it remains to be seen if it will amount to more than Blackberry does today.

Intel needs a clear advantage if they want to do anything more than have a good chance of being the standard CPU for the Windows Phone products. If Intel ships 22nm when ARM is at 28nm, and 14nm when ARM reaches 20nm, they must do better than match ARM as they appear to do here or they'll be left hoping that Windows Phone turns out to be more than just a niche market.

Yes, I know Intel will make architectural improvements to complement their process improvements, but so will ARM. The large number of ARM licensees mean there will be a much larger variety of ARM solutions to fit every need, whereas Intel will have one architecture per generation and try to serve everyone by varying the frequency and number of cores in the CPU and GPU. This scenario is actually somewhat comparable to the wide variety of Android phones of all types and pricepoints versus the iPhone trying to serve everyone by varying the age of the design and the amount of onboard memory as their only segments.