All the companies cooperating with Microsoft, presented numerous novelties at the exhibition, causing a number of sensation. The biggest stir was the appearance of a Windows Mobile smartphone in the portfolio of Sony Ericsson, a company that has long been a Symbian licensee. A detailed preview of XPERIA X1, the new WM PDA phone by LG, is available at our site right now. One thing we would like to add here is that a single product, even if developed by such an influential market player as SE, would hardly threaten the grounds held by S60 and UIQ, as James Marshall, Head of Portfolio, confided to us.

X1 is manufactured by HTC, the estimated price is going to revolve around 1000 euros unless an agreement of internal discount is achieved. The future year will feature three more announces of WM PDAs belonging to the XPERIA series, as stated by SE.

Asus

Интерес вызвали два новых продукта Asus The two products presented by Asus that caught our attention were Asus M930 and the P527 GPS smartphone obviously designed to resemble Nokia E90. A separate article available on our site provides a detailed coverage of the two announces.

   

 

  

  E-TEN

The E-Ten company wasn’t too generous with interesting novelties, rather switching to placing rare yet accurate shots. There might be something to it, but this strategy will hardly help the company in challenging their main rival, HTC. Should they want to, a significant expansion of the portfolio is absolutely necessary, featuring flagship-class product line leaders, fashionable solutions and a number of simpler devices to fill in the empty niches in certain segments. Regardless of such concerns, E-TEN was doing quite well on the market; the company was considered the technology leader due to the combination of powerful CPUs and the variety of functions in their products, thus outpacing the competitor. E-TEN products were held in great esteem by people who found the performance of HTC devices insufficient. Looks like the two companies will switch parts over the course of 2008 – E-Ten chasing, HTC chased.

 

 

Glofiish V900 is the first PDA phone by the company which supports a variety of mobile TV standards – DVB-H, DVB-T, TDMB and DAB. The model is due to enter the market in autumn, just like M810. The estimated price for either of the two is about $750 which is a considerable sum. In March, HTC are planning to present a number of serious alternatives to these two. Obviously E-Ten are trying to copy the interface after the leader – the trademark launcher of V900 is very much alike the prism-shaped element of TouchFLO. .

The hardware platform designed by Samsung engineers employs a Samsung CPU with an operative frequency of 667 Mhz with an integrated graphics accelerator. The device has a total of 128 Mb RAM, is equipped with an QVGA screen and a 3 Mp camera. The latter displays but very modest abilities, but looks quite fair for a WM device – the same unit is used in the top solutions by HTC, Mio and others. The device supports HSDPA, GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS standards.

Another new arrival is M810, which is especially remarkable for its appearances. The compact, lightweight device is equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. What would deceive some into imagining a touch keyboard is in fact but a conventional keyboard hidden beneath a sheet of glossy plastic, which is very easily soiled. Moreover, the button mobility and segmentation are rather poor. The way it looks is much better than the way it works, the same goes to V900 as well. Powerful looks, though very prone to greasing.

 

Similar to its senior counterpart, the V900 device sports a variety of smart features and supports a total of three GSM standards, the EDGE technology, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS – the standard mess kit of a decent modern phone. The internet surfers are sure to find the web functions of the device quite handy: the integrated browser supports direct phone-to-web blogging including image and video attachments and digital signing. A 2 Mp camera is included. So, the two key points of interest in this model are the design and the CPU power.

Gigabyte

У компании Gigabyte на сайте Microsoft присутствует уже знакомый нам по обзору коммуникатор Gigabyte MS800.

HTC

The leader of the WM platform announced three new products, though only one of them was a real novelty – the Pharos model. The exhibition hall devoted to Microsoft products showcased HTC Shadow, which has been sold since the last year by the T-Mobile carrier company yet denied to access the free market.

HTC P3470, also known as Pharos, is a simplified variant Artemis (P3300). It lacks 3G and Wi-Fi support, though still retains GPS capabilities and supports Bluetooth 2.0 and MicroSD cards. A modest 2 Mp camera is included. The CPU used in the model is the somewhat slow TI OMAP 850 with an operative frequency of 200 Mhz. The RAM size equals to 128 Mb, ROM is 256 Mb . The screen uses a 2.8’’ TFT matrix with a 320x240 resolution and a palette of 65K colors. The new device utilizes WM 6 Professional. The dimensions are 108x58.3x15.7 mm. HTC P3470 will soon start selling by the Orange carrier company. The guiding price is 500 euros, which is a bit overpriced. Read our Pharos preview to find out more details on the subject.

 

 

 

 i-mate

The i-mate company presented but a couple of new models from the Ultimate series. However both look quite interesting: Ultimate 8502 and 9502. The former is a candy bar handset with a QWERTY keyboard, the second one is a unusually looking slider. Traditionally, the solutions found by the company look rather intriguing; unfortunately, the production output rates are always insufficient. For example, the Ultimate 9502 model is in a way unique offer, but a number of markets will hardly receive shipments. A detailed review of this model is already available on the site.

Both devices use Windows Mobile 6 Professional and utilize a Qualcomm MSM 7200 400 MHz CPU. The ROM and RAM sizes are 256 Mb and 128 Mb respectively, the protocols supported are Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, Wi-Fi, HSDPA and HSUPA, GPS and the microSD memory cards. There’s a TV-out as well. The difference between the two aren’t solely limited to the form factor, though. The senior model comes with a 3 Mp camera, VGA screen and a 1660 mAh battery. The junior model only has a 2 Mp camera, the screen matrix is a QVGA one and the battery capacity is limited to 1430 mAh.

 

 Pantech

You can see new products coming out of Pantech labs but on rare occasions. Nevertheless every manufacturer tries to manifest their presence on this market at least to a modest extent. Pantech DUO is a double slider smartphone sporting both regular and QWERTY keyboards. It runs the WM Standard operating system. The model uses a Marvell 416 MHz CPU and is equipped with 64 Mb of RAM memory and 128 Mb of ROM memory. The screen resolution is 240x320. The standards supported are UMTS, HSDPA, EDGE and all the subdivisions of GSM. As for the rest of the features, there’s nothing very remarkable besides the said things. It’s also doubtful that the double slider form factor will be very successful with the public – we were unable to guess the reason for duplicating the QWERTY keyboard with a regular one (or vice versa?)

 

 Toshiba

Toshiba have presented three new devices from the Portege product family: Portege: G710, G810 and G920

 Portege G710 – is a candy bar handset with a QWERTY keyboard. It has nothing very special about it, just a decent shelf filler competing with the mass of similar products by other brands. Its downsides include the outdated Bluetooth 1.2 support (though A2DP is supported all right) as well as USB 1.1. The device will start selling in the first quarter of 2008.

The G810 model looks more interesting. It is equipped with a peculiarly designed keyboard, a 3 Mp camera, a GPS navigation unit, a FM radio with RDS, Bluetooth v2.0, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g. The new device supports the following standards: 850/900/1800/1900 GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 850/1900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA (3.6Mbps)/HSUPA (2Mbps). The model uses a Qualcomm MSM 7200 400 MHz cpu, the RAM size is 128 Mb, the ROM is 256 Mb, a memory card slot is supplied. The product is expected in the retail stores in the first quarter.

The G910/G920 models presented most interest (the latter supports A-GPS in addition to the conventional GPS). It catches the eye with its elegant looks; once in your hands, it becomes soiled in no time. On opening the folder, we saw a full-fledged QWERTY keyboard. The main features include GPS, a 2 Mp camera, an 3’’ VGA touchscreen, support for 2100 HSDPA, 900/1800/1900 GSM/EDGE, GPRS class 10, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi (used for VoIP communication). The CPU specifications are still undisclosed, the only known facts are 128 Mb of RAM, 256 Mb of ROM and support for microSD memory cards. The model is due to start selling in the first quarter of 2008.

Palm

A GSM version of the Centro handset for Europe was announced.

 

hp

iPAQ 610 will start selling soon.

Miscelannous

In addition to the above mentioned models, a number of less significant entries were presented at the Microsoft stand.