HTC Announce the Touch Dual, Shift, S730 and P6500

Today in London HTC announced an array of new devices.   

The first device was the Enterprise focused HTC P6500 device. 

This device has a 3.5” screen, 3 mega pixel camera with auto focus and barcode and fingerprint scanning capabilities.  It also comes amply equipped with 256MB internal memory with the option to add up to 1GB in addition to two external SD card slots.   The SD slots are also SDIO allowing for the addition of 3rd party peripherals such as credit card readers and other SDIO accessories. 

For connectivity the P6500 has 3G and HSDPA.  It also has GPS for location related applications.

The second device announced was the HTC Shift.  This is a Vista PC but in a very small form factor similar to the OQO devices. 

Like the P6500 it has 3G and HSDPA integrated as well as a unique feature called SnapVUE™ . SnapVUE provides instant access to emails, calendar, SMS messages and contacts, without the need to fully boot up the device which helps conserve power and extend battery life. The devices weighs a paltry 800g and has a 7” touch sensitive ‘slide-n-tilt’ screen.   The claimed 2 days standby time and 3-4 hrs of usage makes this a very attractive mobile PC. 

The 3rd device at today's launch was the HTC S730.  This is the evolution of the very successful HTC S710 Smartphone which combines the traditional 12 key phone keypad with a full slideout QWERTY keyboard. 

The S730 resolves the two major problems I had with the S710.  Firstly it has 3G and HSDPA, secondly the keyboard offset is corrected.  I had real problems with the offset keyboard on the S710.  It continues to support WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0. 

The final device which was announced was the HTC Touch Dual.  This is an evolution of the very successful HTC Touch device with either a 12 or 20 key keyboard and integrated 3G/HSDPA.

The 12 key keypad should be very popular with hardcore T9'ers who want the feedback of a real keypad whereas the 20 key keyboard gives a pseudo QWERTY keyboard on the device.  What astounded me was that the Touch Dual is only slightly thicker than the original Touch device. 

The S730, Touch Dual and P6500 all run Windows Mobile 6 and should be available by the end of October!

So a very busy day for HTC but great to see such continued innovation!  Feel free to post any questions you may have on these devices!