Today Orange has announced a new smartphone that launches exclusively to its customers in the UK and France. The Orange Santa Clara is a high-performance Android phone and joins Orange’s portfolio of own-branded devices. It’s also the first Orange smartphone to feature Intel technology.

This smartphone is currently dubbed the Santa Clara and will launch in the summer where it will be given a different commercial name. The Santa Clara will run on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS but there are plans to upgrade that to 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich shortly after launch. It will include the Intel Atom Z2460 processor, and supports HSPA+ with Intel’s XMM 6260 platform. This will give fast browsing capability along with energy efficiency. The Santa Clara also features a 4.03-inch display with resolution of 600×1024, 16GB of memory and weighs in at 117g with dimensions of 123mm x 63mm x 9.99mm.

As well as this it also sports an 8-megapixel rear camera that can 10 pictures in under one second and also has 1080p HD video capture along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Locally relevant Orange services will also feature on this phone including Orange TV, Orange Wednesdays, Your Orange, Orange Gestures, Daily Motion and for France only, Deezer.

Orange’s Senior Vice President of Mobile Multimedia and Devices Yves Maitre says, “For ten years, Orange has pioneered a successful own-branded approach to delivering to its customers high quality, affordable handsets in all price ranges, packed with locally relevant and unique services and features. We are delighted to be partnering with Intel to add such an exceptional device to our portfolio.” This article also tells how the Santa Clara will feature NFC support, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi, GPS, HDMI-out and media player and will be compatible with global GSM and 3G networks.

The Santa Clara looks as though it will be a premium smartphone and although there’s no word yet on pricing it will be affordably priced according to Orange and we’ll be bringing you more on this upcoming smartphone as we hear it. Does the Santa Clara capture your interest? Why not let us hear what you think.