Intel has taken a unique approach to getting its Medfield SoC into the hands of customers around the world. After building a competitive, midrange (by today's standards) reference smartphone, Intel allowed its carrier and OEM partners to take this reference phone and sell it under their own brand. We saw the first examples of this approach from Lava with the Xolo X900 and from Orange with the San Diego. 

Russian mobile operator MegaFon is joining the list of Medfield reference design customers as it begins selling the Mint smartphone. The chassis should be identical to other smartphones built on the same Medfield reference design. Internally it features a 1.6GHz Atom Z2460 with Intel's XMM 6260 HSPA+ baseband. Just like the other Medfield reference phones the Mint features a 8MP rear facing camera and 4.03-inch 1024 x 600 display. 

The MegaFon Mint is priced at 17,990 Rubles (~$550) and goes on sale today. No word on what version of Android will be shipping on the device. Remember that the first Medfield reference phones all ran Android 2.3 with the promise of an ICS upgrade down the road.

Intel has been quiet on the smartphone front since MWC earlier this year. Motorola has an event planned for early next month however that could see the introduction of its first x86 based Android phone.