May 25th, 2009
Engadget reveals AT&T's 2009 smartphone lineup; Android, WebOS, & WM
Usually holiday weekends are slow times for news, but Engadget Mobile was sent some AT&T slides that show just about every smartphone coming to the carrier for the rest of the year. These include devices running the Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS, and Android operating systems. I didn’t see any BlackBerry, S60 or iPhone products, but still this information is quite valuable in helping you plan out possible future purchases.
The HTC Warhawk and Fortress (pretty bold names there) are the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 variants for HTC. They keyboard does not looks as good as the one on the unbranded HTC Touch Pro2 I played with at CTIA since the keys are flatter and tighter together. The Warhawk is scheduled for a late Summer launch with Windows Mobile 6.5. It looks like these launch dates are pretty aggressive though.
Another Windows Mobile device that does not seem that exciting, but takes us back to the good old days is the HP iPAQ K3 “Obsidian”. HP’s iPAQs set the bar for Windows Mobile in the past, but there haven’t been many of their devices in the last few years (the HP iPAQ 910 was a nice device though). The iPAQ K3 runs WM 6.5 on a BlackBerry front-facing QWERTY form factor with all of the standard wireless features you would expect from a smartphone today. It looks more business focused with 2 megapixel camera and cameraless versions available.
The Palm Eos rumor was posted a while ago, but the new AT&T slide deck shows it coming to AT&T in the second half of 2009. The Eos has a 2.63 inch, 320×400 touchscreen and front-facing QWERTY keyboard (best of both worlds, huh?), and all the rest of the typical wireless capabilities. The 2 megapixel fixed focus camera is lame though and with only 4GB of available storage (and no removable storage) this seems more like a beginner’s WebOS device that may be targeted to the Centro customer.
I am personally most interested in the HTC Lancaster Google Android device since I really do enjoy my G1 and just wish the hardware was more refined. The HTC Lancaster has all the wireless functions, some new HTC Social Messaging UI, 2.8 inch 240×320 display, and 3 megapixel fixed focus camera. It also shows a 6 month exclusivity on AT&T.
Which of these possible AT&T smartphones interests you the most?
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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