Friday, January 13, 2006

Fujitsu-Siemens to Enter BlackBerry, Treo Wars

Fujitsu-Siemens is about to introduce its first Pocket PC Phone, according to the Internet rumor mill. The stage should be next month's giant 3GSM show in Barcelona, Spain.

Reports say the Pocket Loox T810 and Pocket Loox T830 are high-end power houses; built in the mold of RIM's BlackBerry, Palm's Treo, Hewlett-Packard's iPAQ hw6515 and Motorola's upcoming Q smartphones, with an integrated QWERTY thumb-keyboard and a whole lot more.

The only reported difference between the two T800 series models is the T830's two megapixel camera.

Otherwise, both GSM devices should run the latest Microsoft handheld platform, Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone Edition, and an increasingly common square 240 x 240 pixel resolution display; just like Palm's new Treo 700w. There's also a 416 MHx Intel XScale CPU, 64 MB of RAM and 128 MB of ROM.

The 4.9 x 2.5 x 0.8-inch, 6.7-ounce T800s integrate both 3G cellular and Wi-Fi broadband: By contrast, Palm's new Treo 700w, another Pocket PC Phone, requires an SD card to gain WLAN capability.

On the cellular side there's high speed Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) support for data transfers between 400 and 700 kilobits per second, and for Wi-Fi its 802.11b and 802.11g; the latter still relatively rare for handhelds.

While the official announcement should occur next month, sources say the T800 series most likely won't ship until several months later, in July.

In related news, Brighthand reports Fujitsu-Siemens has a few new handhelds in the works as well.

There's the Pocket Loox C550 (due in February) with a 3.5-inch VGA display, 520 MHz processor, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth; the Pocket Loox N560 (for the March timeframe), the first VGA handheld with integrated GPS, plus a 624 MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM; and a compact GPS model called the Pocket Loox N100 for release during the summer months.

We'll report more details about specifications and availability as that information comes to light.

Related Links:

  • Pocket Loox N-Series Ships
  • Pocket LOOX Due for Windows Mobile Upgrade
  • Fujitsu-Siemens First to Market with New VGA Pocket PC
  • CDMA, Verizon First For Motorola Q
  • Review: HP iPAQ hw6515 – A Little Bit of Everything


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