New mobile/PDA brand hits Australia - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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New mobile/PDA brand hits Australia

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
October 17, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/New-mobile-PDA-brand-hits-Australia/0,130061791,120269163,00.htm

A new mobile-handset brand has entered the Australian marketplace, backed by heavyweights Telstra and Microsoft.

The Australian branch of mmO2, a European mobile carrier, has introduced the mobile/PDA hybrid, dubbed the O2 xda. It was jointly launched today by Microsoft and Telstra.

The device uses Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition 2002 as the interface and is optimised for the Telstra network by having the settings fixed in the ROM of the phone.

The AU$1,699 device features a 206MHz processor, 32MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM. It functions as a 4,096 colour touch-screen PDA, and combines WAP and GPRS. Although the device can view WAP-style Web pages, it can also shrink HTML pages to fit onto its smaller screen.

"This [device] is to help our enterprise customer base get better access to a wide range of communication devices," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the product launch.

"We have a range of developer programs that we have set up to make sure that the new device that we're launching is a source of value add not only for the applications that we have pre-built for it, but applications that people want to write here," he added. "Creating software for the device that will operate well over the Telstra network."

The interface is designed to resemble Windows XP, and can connect to servers via GPRS using ActiveSync. It can also play music and video quite effectively, although Ballmer pointed out he transferred these files when he was connected to his computer rather than download them via GPRS.

The phone is manufactured by HTC Corporation in Taiwan, which also makes iPaq, and is branded by O2.

A similar but smaller device, a smart phone, is due out next year.