>>13
X32
What a confusing name. They should've chosen something like 64P32 or some other name that makes it clear this is actually running in 64-bit mode.
just boot straight to protected mode
The 80376 did that. It was not very successful.
There's really no need to maintain PC compatibility
You underestimate the strength of being able to market something as "IBM PC-compatible". An 8086 has 29K transistors, which is basically nothing on a die with several hundred million or even several billion these days; including backwards compatibility is so cheap that they would be stupid NOT to.
Phones are definitely a lost cause for Intel at this point though.
It doesn't matter because of Java. The Chinese have MIPS on their side. This is one of the areas where x86 isn't as good of a match, but you never know...