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Xplore M68 smartphone from GSPDA is a smartphone working under Palm OS and is primarily sold in the Asian and European markets. What initially impressed about this smartphone most was that the Palm OS had been customised for a more phone centric interface making it very easy to perform the basic calls functions one handed. The use of a five-way jog dial results in an excellent initial experience.

The Xplore M68 runs Palm OS Garnet v5.4. All of the built in apps support the 176x220 screen size, a few third party software programs support this size as well, but most games do not. It has 1.3 megapixel digital camera on the back of the unit.






Xplore M68 Specifications :

Size & Weight: 49.5 x 109 x 22.5 mm (1.9 x 4.3 x .88 Inches); 127g (4.48 oz)
Processor: ARM 9 OMAP 168 Mhz
Operating System: Palm OS Garnet v5.4
Memory: 32 MB RAM / 64 SDRAM flash memory
Expansion: SD/MMC memory slot
Screen: 176x220 pixel; 2.2 inch, 65k-color; transflective (D-TFD)
Audio: 2.2mm headset jack; rear speaker
Power: Rechargeable Li-Ion Poly, 1350 mAh (4 hrs talk/170 hours standby)
Connectivity: Tri-Band GSM radio (900/1800/1900), Class 10 GPRS, HotSync-Connector, IrDA, Bluetooth (v1.1)

The GSPDA Xplore M68 Smartphone is a good buy with its many features including GPRS Class 10, Bluetooth, Tri-band, a 1.3 Megapixel camera and with a standard SD/MMC card slot for external storage too. On top of that, it comes bundled with several programs. It has a very competitive price of only $699 Singapore Dollars ($430~ USD) which is less than half the price of my previous Treo 600, and it doesn't even have Bluetooth built in. said Paddy Tan from Palm Infocenter.

Complete review you can read here.

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After the release of Mio P350 and Mio P550 at CeBIT Mio has officially announced its H610, a GPS receiver that also has a video player and MP3 player on board. The Mio DigiWalker H610 is a portable device with a touch-screen display providing an intuitive interface that allows users to control navigation features in every kind of situation even while driving.

Mio DigiWalker H610 Features :

* GPS Receiver (SiRFStar III) with internal antenna

* CPU: Samsung S3C2440 (400 Mhz)

* Windows CE.net 4.2

* 2,7″ transflective screen with a resolution of 320*240 (65k colors)

* 64MB RAM

* Port : MMC-SD I/O

* MP3 Player (18h battery life)

* Video player


Mio H610 GPS receiver will have 24 European countries maps preinstalled from TeleAtlas and a city guide system.

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E-Ten looks to be following-up their G500 with another GPS device dubbed the Pathfinder, displayed at CeBIT. This is a combination of a navigation system with GPS and a portable medium player with Dmb-television and DAB (digital radio).

The Pathfinder can play video and mp3s. THE TFT lcd-touchscreen of the Pathfinder are 3.5 inch large and have a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The internal memory is 64MB and moreover is there still 128MB flash-memory.

This PMP runs Windows CE 5.0 and features a 400MHz Samsung 2440 processor and Bluetooth 2.0. What concerns the navigation part, the Pathfinder has Tmc (for up-to-date movement information) and the SIRFstar III Gps-chipset for excellent GPS navigation.

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Kinpo is a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, which has already has experience in manufacturing Pocket PC Phones. Now the FCC's documents reveal a new Kinpo PPC, running on Windows Mobile 5.0 platform and featuring Wi-Fi. Kinpo iDo SP70 is probably the successor of the their previous model S600. It keeps its predecessor's design but improves its functionality. Unfortunately, it is still only tri-band GSM and not a quad-band "world" phone.
Kinpo SP70 Pocket PC phone Features:

processor: Freescale ARM i.MX21 350 MHz
memory card slot: miniSD
connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b, Bluetooth 1.2, IrDA
OS: Windows Mobile 5.0, Pocket PC edition
cellular system: GSM tri-band 900/1800/1900, GPRS
display: 240x320 pixels
camera: 1.3 megapixel interpolating up to 2 mega pixels
memory: 128 MB ROM and 64 MB ROM
Java: MIDP 2.0

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On 15th Feb, 2006 at the 3GSM Congress HTC and Orange has announced that they will release Orange SPV M600 - slim-line, ultra-powerful compact PDA with Microsoft push E-Mail capability. It will run on Windows Mobile 5.0 platform and supports quad-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE.

Today a modaco.com member Brody informs us that the Orange SPV M600 PDA will hit the shelves in the next couple of days if it is not there already! So if you are an Orange customer you might be in luck to getting this great device. The SPV M600 probably can be bought for free if you are on certain monthly tariffs.

Related posts - Orange SPV M600 a.k.a. the HTC Prophet to be released !

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The HTC Startrek is one of the much-discussed Windows mobile Smartphone at the moment. THE HTC Startrek is also known as i-Mate Smartflip, and Qtek 8500. This new device from HTC have a very recognizable slick design and unique looking keyboard.

The first impression of this device is somehow strange. Also the camera is notable directly. The the keyboard of HTC Startrek is nicely wide so that you can write SMS easily with two hands. Unfortunately the flat buttons ensure that you cannot type blindly SMS and therefore you must look at where you press.

Next new thing about this device is that it have No Mini-USB! This phone has a new plug type that we could describe as "flat Mini-USB". Most likely HTC, the manufacturer of this device, had not time, sense, money or some other reason to process ordinary Mini-USB.

Guys from pocketinfo.nl, who made the review, said that they are surprised to find only 64MB ROM and not the 128MB ROM that was expected, but the device is very fast! As to them it is probably the fastest Windows Mobile powered Smartphone until now.

Complete review you can read translated to English here or originally written in Dutch here.

Related posts - i-mate Smartflip should be available in Australia and New Zealand

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With CeBIT tradeshow over, we do have two maybe last Pocket PC devices to show you. These are the Mio P350 and Mio P550 series - excluding the addition of Bluetooth 2.0 in the P550 and the WiFi in P350, the both devices are essentially the same. They're equipped with a Samsung S3C2440 400MHz processor, 64MB RAM, 128MB ROM, a 3.5" QVGA (240 x 320) 65K-colour TFT-LCD, Wi-Fi, integrated GPS (SiRFstar III), an SDIO slot, a 1300mAh battery, and run Windows Mobile 5.0. We are happy these new pocket pc devices from Mitac will offer some good competition to the HTC Galaxy and Pocket LOOX from the Fujitsu-Siemens.

Mitac Mio P350



Mitac Mio P550



Both the P350 and P550 have following specifications :

Processor 400 Samsung S3C2449 to MHz
Operating system Mobile Windows 5
128 MB of ROM and 64 MB of RAM
Display TFT LCD from 3,5"to 65.000 colors QVGA
Bluetooth 2,0 (only for the P550)
Wi-Fi (only for the P350)
Chipset GPS SiRFStarIII
Slot of expansion SDIO
Battery from 1300 mAh

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The Eten G500 is the first PDAPhone with a built-in SiRFstarIII GPS chipset and is only the second PDAPhone with a GPS to become available after the HP hw6515 released in August 2005 in Europe and late 2005 in the US. The G500 is also the first PDA phone that has onboard receiver allowing it to support Traffic Message Channel - TMC functions in available countries when using the popular GPS application, Destinator.

The tests are made side by side, with the Asus A636 (GPS PDA) and the Globalsat BT-338 (Bluetooth GPS). The Eten G500 make good overall impression at all.

In terms of TTFF (time to first fix), cold starts ("cold" and "warm" fix) are similar to that of the BT-338 and Asus A636, varying between 45 and 60 seconds with a good view of the sky, so there's no comparison with the endless TTFF of the Qtek G100/Pharos 525 (> 180 seconds). Same comments for the hot starts ("hot" fix), less than 2 seconds when exiting a tunnel for instance. Good news overall and it shows that it is possible to build a PDA with no external antenna and retain good performance, something we feared would not be possible after experiencing with the Qtek G100/Pharos 525 (seehere for details) and to a lesser extent with the Loox N520.

Complete review you can read at gpspassion.com

Related posts :
E-TEN G500 smartphone upcoming
G500 Pocket PC Phone Edition with built-in GPS announced by E-Ten

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Garmin announced 10 new products at CeBIT, both upgrades to existing SatNav products and some new ranges. Most of the new additions are in the StreetPilot devices range and these are: Nuvi 310, Nuvi 310 Deluxe, and Nuvi 360 a new range called the StreetPilot c510, StreetPilot c510 Deluxe and StreetPilot c550 and finally the top of the range are StreetPilot 7200 and StreetPilot 7500.

Garmin's new devices has some additional features and functionality on some including :

- Integrated TMC Traffic data
- Bluetooth Hands free phone functionality
- Text to Speech
- MP3 Player
- Audio Books
- Travel Guides
- Customisable Vehicle Icons
- Garmin Lock (security)

The new 7000 StreetPilot series feature 7 inch screens and have a composite video input for reversing cameras. The top of the range 7500 also features dead reckoning to allow navigation in the absence of GPS signals.

Garmin Mobile was also announced. This is a SiRFStarIII based GPS Cradle for a mobile phone with integrated speaker allowing hands free dialling and full turn by turn navigation. This is compatible with a wide range of phones operating Windows Mobile, Symbian, and PalmOS.

The last product to be announced by Garmin was the GVN52. This is an OEM "Black Box" solution to integrate into a vehicle's A/V system. The first implementation of this will be the Kenwood system.

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Medion has announced the MDPEA 1000 pocket pc with built-in digital TV and microdrive at the CeBIT 2006 tradeshow. MDPEA 1000 is a pocket-sized Windows Mobile 5.0 device with advanced multimedia capabilities. As we have learned from PocketCenter.de, the MDPEA 1000 sports a 3.8-inch color VGA (480 x 640 pixels) TFT screen, integrated 20 GB microdrive and a DVB-T tuner. It may also be used for navigation through the built-in GPS receiver.

The MDPEA 1000 UMPC device is expected to be on the market later this year. This new UMPC fromm Medion should be a better choice for those of you who are looking for a lower price.

Related News - Microsoft Ultra-Mobile PC unveiled at CeBIT 2006

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