HTC Introduces the Snap at CTIA 2009

HTC kicked off the show Wednesday morning by introducing the Snap, its newest QWERTY device. We haven't seen one in this form factor from the smartphone manufacturer in a while (think back to the T-Mobile Dash) and given the design, it's no surprise that the handset is optimized for e-mail and messaging.

In fact, HTC thinks e-mail is so important it has created a new feature called Inner Circle that prioritizes your e-mails based on your preferences. By pressing the dedicated Inner Circle button, the HTC Snap will bring e-mails from a preselected group of people to the top of your in-box so you can read and reply to them immediately.

The new functionality was created in response to a Harris Interactive study that found 44 percent of U.S. adults are overwhelmed by the amount of e-mail they receive, and 55 percent of U.S. adults prioritize five or fewer people with whom they communicate via e-mail.

The HTC Snap offers Microsoft Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server as well as support for POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts. The smartphone's full QWERTY keyboard also features "extra-large domed keys" to provide for a better typing experience.

Moving beyond messaging, the Snap will run Windows Mobile 6.1 and comes with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, 256MB ROM/192MB RAM, a microSD/SDHC expansion slot, and 2-megapixel camera/camcorder. The smartphone measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.4 inch deep and has a 2.4-inch QVGA nontouch display.

The HTC Snap is expected to be available in select channels during the second quarter of 2009 and will be rolled out worldwide during the second half of the year. Here in the States, we'll get our on own version of the Snap, called the HTC S522, this summer and it will support AT&T's 850/1900MHz HSDPA bands, though it'll be sold unlocked and not through the carrier. Pricing was not revealed at this time.

Pantech Matrix Pro available at at&t

G, thanks to the official announcement from AT&T and Pantech at last week’s MWC, but it looks like the two companies have gone ahead and made this bad boy available for the world to abuse. Early reports place the Pantech Matrix Pro in stores right…about…now. You can head down and pick one up for the oh-so-reasonable price of $179.99 after $50 mail-in rebate with a 2-year contract. What does that $180 buy you? A Windows Mobile Standard-based dual slider phone with a 528mhz processor driving a 2.4″ QVGA screen, GPS and more. Sadly, there’s no Wi-Fi on this baby but AT&T seems to think that its 3G coverage should deliver all the high speed browsing power you could want. Hmmm. Overall, this looks like a solid upgrade to last year’s Pantech WM slider offering, though given the compromises made on that device, it wouldn’t be hard to top its lackluster performance. Anyone excited enough to head on down and give the Matrix Pro a try? Let us know!

HTC Touch Pro 2 Coming To America

As you might recall, when HTC unveiled the Touch Pro2 and Touch Diamond2 during this year’s Mobile World Congress, all HTC would commit to was a Q2 European release. Obviously not wanting to have another Touch HD fiasco on its hands, it was widely speculated that HTC would not be so foolish as to leave North Americans high and dry with another extremely attractive handset this time around. The problem however, was that many were concerned a North American version of the Touch Pro2 would arrive quite some time after its release in Europe. In other words, most people eager to get their hands on the device would have already moved on by the time it actually reached US soil. Fear not, HTC fans; along came HTC’s official Twitter account to explain that “The Touch Pro2 will be broadly available in all major markets, including North America.” But when would this North American release be? Seven minutes later another tweet stated that the Touch Pro2 “Will start to roll it out late Q2.” It’s ambiguous at best, but could we be looking at a near-simultaneous North American/European release?

Acer jumps into the mobile phone arena

Today Acer announced at least four new touch phones running Windows Mobile Professional. All share many features, including quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and microSDHC support. They also have a custom widget UI on top of Windows Mobile.

* M900: This phone has a 3.8-inch 480 x 800 WVGA display, accelerometer and FM radio, with a 5-megapixel camera, fingerprint reader and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
* F900: The F900 has the same 3.8-inch display as the M900, but loses the keyboard and some camera resolution to fit in a 12mm-thin body.
* DX900: This phone has dual SIM slots, allowing for two separate phone numbers. It also has 3G a 3 megapixel camera, accelerometer, and a 480 x 640 VGA display.
* X960: This simpler smartphone focuses on navigation, and has a VGA display, 3 megapixel camera and a 3D user interface.

The company also released preliminary info on three new phones coming later in the year:

* F1 (code name): Windows Mobile 6.5, 3.7-inch display, accelerometer, 5 megapixel camera, all in a 12mm thin body.
* L1 (code name): A smartphone with a feature phone price (as cheap as free with contract). Features slider design with numeric keypad, GPS, touch screen, and multiple color options.
* C1 (code name): Affordable like the L1. Standard slab form factor,with jogwheel and multiple color options.