Lost in the iPod madness, HP announced five new additions to its handheld line yesterday — two smartphones, two PDAs, and a GPS navigation device.
- The 610 (successor to HP’s 510 iPaq cell phone), sports a standard cell phone keypad, but with a touch-sensitive navigation wheel embossed across most keys. It supports HSDPA with a 240-by-320 pixel portrait-mode screen measuring 2.8 inches diagonally. Comes with Google Maps and GPS.
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The iPaq 910 features a 2.5-inch-diagonal, 320-by-240-resolution landscape-mode display atop a full QWERTY keyboard for thumb or index-finger typists.
Both the 610 and the 910 are Windows Mobile 6 smart phones with 3-megapixel cameras, powerful 520-MHz Marvell (formerly Intel) XScale processors, and several new (and business-friendly) HP applications and services. Unlocked for use with any GSM carrier, the two IPaq models will sell for around $600 each, according to HP.
- The iPaq 210 is an Enterprise PDA with 4″, 640-by-480-pixel screen, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and several hardware connectors (including mini-USB) to work with bar-code scanners and a voice-over-IP handset. The iPaq 210′s street price is expected to be $400 to $450.
- The iPaq 100 Series is a Consumer PDA running Windows Mobile 6 which supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. HP expects this relatively bare-bones model to go for something in the neighborhood of $200.
- The iPaq 310 Travel Companion is a large-screen (4.3″, 800-by-480-pixel) device that includes GPS navigation and multimedia features. It’s NOT based on Windows Mobile. HP has created its own user interface, designed to integrate with a trip-planning portal that HP expects to introduce later this fall. The iPaq 310′s multimedia support will allow you to view DVD-quality video on the device and to listen to music from sites that support Microsoft’s PlaysForSure digital rights management technology. HP expects the 310 to sell for $400 to $450
As a commentor on Mobile Crunch put it; Shhhh…do you hear that? It’s the sound of uninspiring new HP products being greeted with indifference.
Symbian dominates the smartphone market with a 67 percent share, while Microsoft’s Smartphone has a 14 percent share. The rest is divided by Motorola and Palm, both of whom are developing Linux platforms. The iPhone uses a variant of OS X. Google may take a chunk of the mobile OS in the future.
