3GSM Barcelona 2007 live coverage

The HTC stand at the 3GSM world congress was beautifully styled in black and green. Almost all their latest handsets were showcased at the stand and as a traditionally influential manufacturer of Windows Mobile devices it attracted a lot of visitors.

HTC stand

HTC P3350

The HTC P3350 (Love) is a Pocket PC which runs under Windows Mobile 5.0. It resembles a lot the current HTC P3300 (Artemis) but lacks GPS. Instead, it is equipped with dedicated music keys since it's the first multimedia-oriented device of the Taiwanese manufacturer. Powered by a 200MHz TI OMAP 850 processor, it features quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, FM radio and a 2 megapixel camera.

The navigation of the HTC P3350 is performed with the same HTC proprietary RollR as used in the HTC P3300. It consists of a wheel and a trackball at the same time. The wheel is used for scrolling among menu items while the trackball is used for navigating the mouse pointer on the display. The HTC P3350 (Love) will start shipping in March 2007.

The new HTC P3350 featuring multimedia keys

HTC X7500 Advantage

The HTC X7500 Advantage (Athena) is based on the Windows Mobile 2005 Pocket PC edition and comes with a hefty size and a weight of 359 g. It is powered by an Intel XScale 624 MHz processor and an ATi graphic chip and has a large 5" TFT touchscreen display with VGA resolution of 640x480 pixels. The HTC Advantage is also equipped with a detachable hardware QWERTY keyboard and has a hard disc with a storage capacity of 8GB. As we managed to check, the keypad itself is not the best one we've seen. It is surely styled nice, but it lacks any feedback at all and you can hardly tell whether you've pressed the key successfully or not. The body itself features a joystick and several other soft keys which means that the device can be freely used without the keyboard itself. The HTC X7500 Advantage surely feels heavy but is really compact when you fold it in its leather case along with the keyboard. Another drawback of the device is that the Windows Mobile OS fails to utilize the large resolution of the screen and all user interface elements seem unnaturally large.

As for connectivity options, the HTC X7500 Advantage boasts quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, and stereo Bluetooth support plus a TV-Out port. On top of that it comes along with a 3 megapixel camera. The manufacturer states a rated 8 hour battery life which is far better than the 3 hour battery life of the average laptop. The HTC X7500 Advantage (Athena) will start shipping in March 2007.

The HTC X7500 Advantage

HTC S710

The HTC S710 (Vox) is among the first devices powered by the new Windows Mobile 6 OS. The HTC S710 is a regular Windows smartphone but with a twist. Besides the 2.4" TFT display, the stereo Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support and the megapixel camera, the new smartphone also features a full sliding hardware keyboard. As it proved, the keyboard is rather easy to use and type. The HTC S710 will become commercially available in the first half of 2007.

The HTC S710 QWERTY smartphone

HTC 3400

The last device officially announced by HTC is the HTC 3400 - the rumored upgrade of the Prophet platform, meaning that the new HTC 3400 Pocket PC is in fact a sucessor of the Qtek S200. Unfortunately the HTC 3400 wasn't showcased at the HTC stand at the 3GSM 2007.

The new device comes with almost the same functionality but with the added convenience of a sliding hardware QWERTY keyboard and a smaller weight. The processor used to run that baby is still the good old TI OMAP850 200MHz processor.